“Nothing?” Nessa gaped at her and then looked guilty. “I’m so thoughtless. Here I am worrying about spiders and press statements, and you’ve just lost the man you were married to for two decades. I know you were divorced, and that he wasn’t exactly...” Her voice trailed off as she studied Joanna’s face. “I mean, twenty years is a long time, even if he was a—” She gave a helpless shrug. “Give me some clues here. I want to say the right thing, but I don’t know what that is. How do you feel? Are you sad or mad? Do I get you tissues or a punching bag?”

“I don’t know how I feel.” Joanna decided not to mention her less than charitable thoughts. “I feel...strange.”

“Yeah, well, strange about covers it. Can I grab a glass of water? Turns out covert operations in dense woodland is thirsty work. Then I’ll brush my hair, work magic with makeup so that I don’t look as if I’m dressed for Halloween and get to work.”

“Go through to the kitchen. Help yourself. I’ll join you in a minute.”

Joanna went through the whole of the ground floor at the front of the house making sure all the blinds were closed before returning to the kitchen. They could stay there with their cameras, but she’d give them nothing to photograph. And if someone was brazen enough to breach her gates, they wouldn’t be rewarded for it.

Nessa had settled herself at the kitchen island. She had a glass of water in one hand and her phone in the other. She was scrolling through social media. “We’re trending, no surprise there. Interesting hashtags. Lots of speculation about what they were doing when the car went off the road—” she sent Joanna a sideways glance “—sorry. This is...awkward.”

“It’s fine.”

“Some people are saying it’s a shame because it was his recipe for citrus salmon that made them realize good food wasn’t just for restaurants.”

He created that recipe for me, Joanna thought. He was trying to teach me to cook. I ruined the salmon and he laughed at me and said some people couldn’t be taught. That was the day she’d given up cooking.

“Others are saying he was a sleaze, good riddance, yada yada,” Nessa continued, scrolling. “They’ve managed to get a comment from two of the women he—what? No way.” She stared at the screen.

“What?”

“You don’t want to know. If you want my advice, delete all your personal social media accounts.”

“I don’t have social media accounts.”

“Good decision.” Nessa carried on scrolling, her expression alternating between disgust and surprise.

Joanna sighed. “That bad?”