Is this why Harwood thinks Danny isn’t guilty? Do they know more that means his story doesn’t stack up?

My heart is hammering as I step outside and on to the street. The sun is trying to break through the clouds, but the wind has picked up. I wrap my coat more tightly around me. The forecast for the next few days isn’t good. Storms are coming, they say, though right now the white clouds don’t seem to threaten rain.

From inside my bag my phone is ringing and Freya’s number flashes. ‘I’ve just had an interesting conversation,’ she tells me before I’ve had the chance to speak.

‘Really?’ I rub a hand over my sleep-deprived eyes, dodging a cyclist who swerves on to the pavement and then back on to the road without any awareness.

‘With Iona’s mother.’

‘Oh?’ I stop short. There was only one time I remember Iona mentioning her mum and her words had been so cold they’d made me shudder. The same mother who hadn’t noticed her daughter was missing for twenty-five years.

‘I’m going to meet her,’ Freya says excitedly. ‘I’m catching the train up now. I get the sense there’s something she’s holding back on. I’m hoping she might tell me, but—’ Freya breaks off. ‘Well, to be honest, I don’t know how much I can trust what she’s saying, and I thought you might like to come.’

My stomach flutters with the thought of meeting the woman who could tell me more than most about Iona. She’s become something of an enigma, and if there’s anything that can help me piece together what happened between her and Danny it’s worth pursuing. Especially if my brother’s version of the night she died isn’t accurate. ‘Okay. I’ll come,’ I say quickly.

‘Great. I’ll meet you at New Street station at three.’

‘New Street? Where’s that?’

‘It’s where Iona’s mother lives,’ she says. ‘Birmingham.’

Chapter Twenty-Three

Freya told me she’d arranged to meet Iona’s mother, Ange, in a pub in Balsall Heath. When she added that she didn’t fancy walking into a bar like that on her own, I looked it up on my phone, silently agreeing with her while wondering why the area, Balsall Heath, rang a bell.

Though my parents were originally from Birmingham, they never said much about their lives before moving to the island. What little I knew was that they’d bought their first house in Shirley, not far from Gran’s house where Mum had grown up. With their having no interest in returning, it meant I’d never visited myself.

I drive to New Street where I meet Freya, whose excitement is bubbling off her. She strides across the station, looking for the taxi rank, leaving me trailing in her wake.