‘I only knew about the one you’ve been searching for,’ Julie said. ‘Although … we were issued work phones at one stage. Don’t know why. No one ever used them. Mine’s still lying in my drawer.’

‘That’s interesting,’ DI Bradley said. ‘No one at your work mentioned that to us.’

‘It was a while back. And as I said, no one really used them. They weren’t great handsets and managing two phones was a pain. I imagine most people wouldn’t have given them a second thought.’

‘It’s a lead we’ll look into, anyway,’ he said.

‘But I don’t understand why she’d have started using it after all this time,’ Julie said, shaking her head.

DI Bradley looked to Constable King. ‘I know it seems a little out of character for Clare from what you’ve told us, but we can’t rule out that she was deliberately trying to keep secret who she was seeing and that she’d taken steps to ensure her privacy.’

‘But we knew she wanted to keep it quiet anyway, she didn’t want to jinx it. We’ve already told you that,’ Julie said.

‘Do either of you have cause to think it might have been more complicated than that? That perhaps this is a man who has a lot to lose if his personal affairs are revealed?’ DI Bradley said. ‘He might be married, for example.’

‘I really don’t think Clare would date a married man. Not knowingly,’ Julie said. ‘It wouldn’t be like her.’

I stayed quiet. We all did things outside our character from time to time.

‘We’ve run searches on various dating websites and apps. You’d said this was where Clare met the man she was dating. We’ve only found one account linked to her known email addresses and that’s been dormant for the last seven months. Even before then, she didn’t appear to have responded to any messages she received.’

That was definitely strange. I was absolutely sure Clare had told me she’d met this mystery man on Perfect Partners. I told DI Bradley as much and he checked his files.

‘We definitely checked that company and there was no record of any account attached to Clare’s name or any of the email addresses she was known to use.’

Julie started jiggling her legs again, her nerves showing.

‘I still don’t see why we’ve been brought here,’ she said. ‘You could have told us any of this, asked us any of these questions, over the phone.’

‘We’ve more to go through,’ he said as I placed my hand gently on Julie’s knee to still it.

She brushed it away.