‘I think I can safely assume I’ve lost my chance there, in more ways than one.’ Heather forced herself to smile, hoping to cover up exactly how painful those words were. ‘A trip to the countryside is what I need now. It won’t be completely terrible, I promise. The big old building is a spa now, and there’s a nice cottage where we can stay, in the grounds. Fresh air, long walks, and I could do with some company. Stuck inside that house by myself, it’s not healthy.’ She thought of the petals on the stairs, the heart on the terracotta pot. ‘Diane might have fucked me over with the Red Wolf story, but that doesn’t mean I can’t eventually write my own version of it. And this would be great background – absorb the atmosphere of the place. And maybe get a massage at the spa, I don’t know.’

Nikki swirled the wine in her glass, frowning into its depths.

‘And, okay, mostly I am just curious to see the place. Pamela Whittaker said it was evil.’ Heather smiled as Nikki rolled her eyes. ‘I want to see this miserable patch of grass my mum apparently thought was so amazing. Where this all started. I’m sure that … I’m sure that if I want to know more about her, I have to go to this place and see it for myself.’

‘This place is in Lancashire, isn’t it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Lancashire, where they recently found bits of a woman’s body shoved inside a tree.’

‘Come on, it’s the same county. It’s not like the murderer is on the welcoming committee as you drive up the M6.’ For a moment, an image of the petals and the dead bird floated across her mind. She could still smell the blood. Guiltily, she pushed it away.

‘Hmm.’ Nikki, who had been nursing the wine rather than drinking it, took a long swallow of her drink, then shrugged. ‘All right. I have some time off owing. And apparently, I have nothing better to do.’

Heather had always liked long car journeys. They put her in mind of her earliest childhood, when her dad was still alive and he would get a sudden urge to drive to the coast. Her mother would give her a big bag of barley sugars to settle her stomach – never forgetting the incident where she had vomited noisily out of the window while they were on the motorway – and she would spend hours sucking sweets and looking out at stretches of green and brown and grey, smears and smudges of places she would never know. Sometimes she would play games with her dad, iterations of I-spy or word games based on number plates, and when they got to their destination she would always be faintly disappointed. There was something precious and strange about having both her parents’ undivided attention for so long.