“I appreciate you coming,” Meredith said. “I didn’t know if you would.”

Lindsay felt a pang of guilt that she’d even considered refusing. “Yeah, well, we’ve been friends a while now.”

“I haven’t behaved much like a friend since Penny and I split up. I didn’t return your calls, I didn’t come round.”

Lindsay shrugged. “I assumed you weren’t ready to talk about it. I wasn’t offended.”

Meredith sighed. “It wasn’t just that I wasn’t ready. I knew Penny was seeing Sophie. I saw Sophie pick her up one night around dinnertime and drop her off a couple of hours later. I figured you’d have heard Penny’s side of it. Which would not have been a pretty story. I didn’t expect you’d be too bothered about the case for the defense.”

“You should know me better than that.”

Meredith acknowledged her reproach with a sad smile. “I know. But I haven’t been thinking too straight.”

“That’s what I’m here for now. But if you’re serious about wanting me to investigate this, you’re going to have to give me a free hand.”

Meredith nodded, cradling her coffee in her hands as if it were precious and fragile. “You got it,” she said.

Lindsay nodded, her lips tight in anticipation of awkwardness. She pushed her hair back from her face and said, “It means I have to ask difficult questions. You probably aren’t going to want to answer some of them, but it’s important that you tell me the truth, okay? Even if it’s something that makes it look bad for you, you have to tell me. I’m not going to misunderstand the way your lawyer might, because I know you couldn’t have killed Penny.” Well, not like that, she added mentally. Not with that degree of premeditation.

Meredith stared into her coffee. “I don’t have anything to hide,” she said, her voice flat as a synthesized answering machine. She looked up, her eyes blank. “I didn’t kill Penny. I don’t know who did. That’s what I need you to find out.”

“I’ll do my best. So, when did Penny actually arrive in Britain?”

“She’d been here a day or two under three weeks.”

Lindsay jotted a note on the fresh pad she’d dropped into her backpack in Half Moon Bay. “I knew she was coming over, of course, I just wasn’t sure exactly when she’d left. It was Sophie who spoke to her last. And you were due to come too, is that right?”

“I guess you remember how carefully she liked to plan things, and she’d been organizing us both for this trip for months.” Meredith sighed. “Originally, the plan was that I was going to join her for a couple of weeks near the beginning of her stay, then I was coming back towards the end for another ten days. After we split up, she decided it would be good for her to go ahead with the trip anyway, only alone.”

Lindsay nodded. “But you decided to come regardless?”