‘What?’

‘Have a fireplace at home? I’m trying to picture you, Vincent. At home. Where do you live? Who do you live with?’

As she’d already learned to expect, he deflected the question with a small sigh and a twist of the lips.

The big group had just about settled their seating arrangements. They’d clearly been downstairs at the bar for a while, their conversations loud and full of laughter. Estate agents, maybe, or downmarket lawyers or accountants, but the room was dark, and their table was backlit by orange-shaded lights in sconces on the wall. They were moving around a lot too, gesticulating broadly, the shadowy backs of the people in front sliding across the faces of the people across the table – and they were loud, theatrically loud in this small room. They didn’t sound like accountants or lawyers or people in cheap suits – they sounded like actors at a wrap party. Her eye was drawn by a flash of bright-orange curls, instantly obscured by a broad back, and the moment she got a look in again, she saw that the woman on that side of the table was wearing a hat, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. She couldn’t make out the shade of the hair in the deep shadow there; probably just a trick of the dim lighting.

Petra had been able to study the woman in the hat surreptitiously because she was directly in her eyeline, but now a man stood up and shifted into the pool of light.

Jesus.

‘I know that guy. I saw him the other night. At the pizza place.’

Because it was unmistakably the same man. His cream suit and white-banded fedora, the slicked-back hairstyle made him stand out like a zebra at a mule party. How could she not have noticed him coming in with the others? He was staring at them, and when Petra met his eyes, he nodded, a thin smile on his lips.

Petra was the first to draw away from the staring contest as Vincent turned in his chair. ‘Which one?’ Vincent asked.

Petra looked back at the table, but the fedora man wasn’t there anymore. In his place was a man with slicked hair and a pockmarked face, but less striking, a blander expression – and no hat. He was wearing a white office shirt, his jacket hung over the back of his chair, and he was talking to the woman next to him. Amazing what your mind will let you believe.

‘Wow, that was weird. I swear I thought I…’ She stopped talking and took a sip of her wine. ‘So, tell me about yourself, Mr Falling Man. Full disclosure is required if you want the full follow-up service.’

‘What do you need to know, ma’am?’

‘Personal life. Intimate habits. Relationship details. That sort of thing.’

He smiled. ‘Well, for starters, I’m living with my grandmother, Nan Gloria. I moved in to help her after Max died.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a three-bedroom house. She doesn’t ask for money but I pay her a little rent. No wife or girlfriend, if that’s on your form.’