Close to tears, Lindsay stumbled blindly into the close and ran up the stairs to the first-floor flat. She walked into the hall, but before she could reach her room, Helen’s voice rang out. “Lindsay? Is that you? Thank God you’re back. Rosalind’s flat’s been burgled!”

5

Less than an hour after she had left Caird House, Lindsay was heading back there, this time with Helen. “I told Rosalind I’d find you and bring you round as soon as you got back,” Helen announced for the third time. “I knew you’d be going back to Sophie’s flat, so I thought I’d wait for you there. I still have a key, so I can feed her bloody tropical fish when she’s away.” Why me, thought Lindsay wildly. Answering her unspoken question, Helen continued. “With you being there this afternoon, Rosalind thought you might have noticed somebody hanging around. And besides,” she added mysteriously, “there are things involved that I don’t think Rosalind will be too happy to tell the police about.”

“What do you mean?” Lindsay asked.

“Oh, I’ll leave Rosalind to tell you all about it. It’ll be better coming from her. How did you get on with Claire? Tell all!”

Lindsay gave Helen a brief rundown on her day, punctuated at regular intervals with Helen’s sharp exclamations. When she reached the meeting with Cordelia, Helen exploded in righteous anger as incandescent as her flaming red hair. “The nerve of the woman!” she declared. “I hope you sent her away with her guts in a paper bag!”

Lindsay drew up in Caird House car park, saying, “What’s the point, Helen? She’s got every right to her own life. I was the one who did the walking.” She got out and slammed the car door, adding as they walked over to the flats, “I don’t think I was doing her much good by the end. As soon as I left, her writer’s block disappeared, and she wrote the best book of her career, by all accounts. I guess she’s better off without me.”

Before Helen could reply, Lindsay used Rosalind’s spare keys to let them into the block and headed straight for the lifts. “It’s the eighth floor, isn’t it?” she asked, her finger hovering over the button.

“That’s right,” Helen replied, finally realizing that Lindsay didn’t want to discuss Cordelia further.

When they rang Rosalind’s bell, the door was opened almost immediately by a uniformed police constable. “We’re friends of Ms. Campbell,” Helen announced, sweeping past him in the narrow hall. “She’s expecting us.” Flashing an apologetic smile at the constable, Lindsay followed Helen through to the living room.