“She ever talk about them with you and Sophie?”

Lindsay shook her head. “She once asked Sophie for some background information about HIV, but even then she didn’t explain why she wanted to know. We had to wait till the book came out before we knew what it was all in aid of.”

“Exactly. She always said if she talked about it too much, she got bored with the story, then she couldn’t be bothered to write it.” Meredith’s words clearly jogged a painful memory, for her eyes glittered with tears again. “I can’t believe it, you know? It’s like some sick joke. Like the phone’s going to ring and she’s going to say, ‘Hey, have you suffered enough yet?’” She clenched her eyes shut, but tears still seeped through.

Unsure what to do for the best, Lindsay stood up and crossed to Meredith’s side, putting a careful arm round her shoulder. “I know,” she said softly. “Just when you think you’ve learned everything there is to know about pain, something creeps up on you and lets you know you’re only a beginner. And everybody tells you you’ll be all right, that time’s a healer. I’ll tell you something, Meredith. I don’t think it ever gets better. It just gets different.”

Meredith half turned and buried her face in Lindsay’s chest, her body jerking with sobs. As she wailed, Lindsay simply held her close, one hand rubbing her back, trying not to think about Penny. Or her own Frances, all those years ago. It couldn’t last for ever, she told herself.

Eventually, cried out, Meredith pulled away and blurted, “I miss her so much,” her voice choked with emotion. She pulled herself upright and staggered across the room into the hallway. Lindsay, hesitantly taking a step or two after her, was reassured by the sound of running water. She went back to her seat and waited. Long minutes passed, then Meredith returned, her eyes even more bloodshot, her face glowing from the scrubbing she’d clearly given it.

“Okay,” she said briskly. “This is not getting you any closer to finding Pen’s killer. What do we do now?”

“Who had a motive?” Lindsay demanded. “Apart from you, that is?”

Chapter 4

Lindsay hadn’t expected London temperatures to be nearly as high as California’s. She was still dressed for the air-conditioned coolness of the plane, she thought, shrugging her shoulders to unstick shirt from skin. In this heat, jeans and cotton twill were not the ideal outfit for climbing four flights of narrow, dusty stairs with the smell of urine from the entrance still pungent. She wondered how many prospective clients were put off by the approach to Catriona Polson’s office. Then she remembered that those climbers would be pre-published authors full of hope. “None,” she muttered under her breath as she rounded the curve of the stairs and reached the final landing.

In contrast to the understated brushed-steel plaque on the downstairs wall and the ambience of a stairway which clearly doubled as a hostel for the homeless, the offices of Polson and Firestone indicated that somewhere on their client list there were some major earners. Even when Lindsay had left Britain, before Soho went up-market and sexually ambivalent, office suites in the area had commanded high rents. Now that the district was almost chic, it must take a sizeable bank balance to secure the whole top floor of a building with a view of Soho Square.