‘No. I promise you, one hundred per cent. Samir’s married, he’s got kids, and he dumped me back then, remember? And it doesn’t matter what he thinks, it wouldn’t matter if he got down on his knees and begged because I would never …’ She stopped but it seemed this was the night for truth-telling. The genie was out of the bottle – out on the town, actually, with its mates. ‘He really hurt me back then. Deeply hurt me. It was more than just splitting up with a boyfriend.’ She paused again, felt the weight of Lennie’s listening. ‘The rejection – I felt like he’d rumbled me. I felt like there was something wrong with me and I’d got away with it for two years, managed to hide it, but then he’d finally seen the truth and reared back in horror.’

She thought of him three hours ago, turning his back, walking away.

Overhead, Lennie was very still. ‘What truth?’

The thought was out of Robin’s mouth before she knew she’d had it, before she knew that it was what she’d ever – always – thought. ‘That when it came down to it, basically, I wasn’t worth loving.’

‘What?’ Shock in Lennie’s voice. ‘Why would you think that?’

Because I’m the kind of person who has this conversation with her thirteen-year-old daughter? Because I’m a wrecking ball? Because there is something wrong with me and I don’t know what it is and I can’t stop it?

She swerved away from the edge, got her hands back on the wheel. Jesus. ‘I don’t think that now, obviously.’ She tried a laugh, stopped when she heard how nuts she sounded. ‘It was just an age thing – it’s hard, that time. Trying to work out who you are and negotiate the world. Finding your people. Not for everyone, though – you’re going to be completely different because you know how much you’re loved, right?’

A small voice said, ‘Yes.’

‘I wasn’t nearly as sorted as you, or as clever. But I got there in the end.’

There was silence overhead for several seconds and then a whole-body shuffle. Lennie’s feet appeared on the ladder, the creaking incredibly loud in the stillness of the house. She lifted the edge of the duvet and lowered herself in.

They lay on their backs, shoulder to shoulder, looking at the curling edges of the glow-stars in the light from under the door. ‘I think you’re worth loving,’ Lennie said.

Chapter Twenty-one

When she opened her eyes, the room was filled with weak light. She waited for her brain to load, reopen the files on the desktop, but then, with a wash of pure panic, she remembered: she’d told Samir. She lay rigid, heart pounding. After eighteen years, someone else knew. Not just someone: the Head of Homicide.

And Josh was a killer. A real killer.