Thanks to Frankie and Leanne’s hard work, Mal had ten pages packed with articles that celebrated the lives of the victims and the good deeds of those who had tried to help, but the front page was proving contentious. Mal’s current draft consisted of a three-by-four grid of photos; twelve faces to put to twelve names. Each one meant something to Leanne. She knew their story. She felt their family’s loss. And she felt her own when she allowed her gaze to pass over Lois’s smiling face. Her heart turned to stone when she looked at the bottom right-hand corner.

‘You can’t put Declan Gallagher’s face on the front page,’ she said. ‘I’m telling you now, the people of Sedgefield won’t accept it. It’s an insult to the memory of the eleven people he killed.’

‘What am I supposed to do, Leanne? I can’t leave him out. We don’t know exactly what went wrong yet.’

‘I could hazard a guess.’

‘I’m sure you could, but for now, you can keep your theories to yourself,’ Mal warned.

Leanne kept her arms folded as she walked around Mal’s desk and sat down on the sofa. ‘What if I have evidence to support those theories?’

Mal released a huff. He didn’t want to hear this, but he had no choice.

‘I have a witness who saw Declan inside the theatre, and it turns everything we assumed about him on its head, or should I say, it turns what everyone else thought about him on its head.’

Mal mirrored Leanne’s body language by folding his arms and resting them on his beer gut. He leant back in his chair. ‘I’m listening.’

‘The theory is that Declan saw the fire from his flat and ran into the burning building to save his sister, knowing that the second-rate restoration job he’d been overseeing had turned the theatre into a death trap.’

‘Not exactly the accepted version, but go on.’

‘Now, bearing in mind that Declan had given his sister tickets for the show, it’s safe to assume that he would have known to look for her in the stalls.’

From his grim expression, Mal was not finding this slow reveal as exciting as Leanne. ‘Agreed.’

‘In which case, you would expect him to head straight to that part of the theatre.’

‘I suppose.’

‘So why didn’t he?’ Leanne said with a glint in her eye. ‘According to my source, Declan was upstairs after the ceiling collapse, if not before.’

Mal’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

‘He was hardly going to save Karin from up in the circle, now was he?’ Leanne continued.

‘He could have gone upstairs for a better view.’