‘I’m going to make a call, get DS Wright to start looking into this,’ Kelly says, closing the lid of the laptop and walking away, fumbling for her mobile phone. Fran pushes her chair back, gets to her feet.

‘I’d like to be alone for a while,’ she says as I also stand. ‘I’ll be in my room.’ And she hurries from the kitchen, leaving me alone, the bitter taste of hatred lying thick on my tongue.

Later, the house quiet, I sneak along to the bathroom for a shower, Dominic having come home earlier and gone straight to Laurel’s room where he sat, with the door closed, for over an hour. Dinner was a half-hearted, stilted affair, Kelly rustling up soup and cheese sandwiches that ended up laying dried and curling at the edges when nobody could face eating them. How does she do it? I wonder, as the hot water thunders over my head, how does she spend day after day in the thick of events like these? As I rub shampoo into my hair, a thick clump falls out in my hand, washing away down the drain, and I blink back tears.

A sure sign of stress, my hair came out in clumps in Scotland once the accusations were made. And now it’s happening again. I carefully rinse the soap from my hair, trying not to touch it too much. How long before this nightmare is over? There are so many pieces, it’s like a jigsaw that I can’t quite fit together – today, the graffiti and the abusive messages added another element to it all, another part of the picture that I can’t make fit. Does the person who did this have information about Laurel? Or are they just out to be vindictive? The blonde hair on Dominic’s jacket, the psychic raising her eyes to his – you know where she is – the phone call from the woman who quite clearly wasn’t a work colleague. Is it all related? Or am I simply clutching at straws?

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 16

Shouting rouses me from my dozy state of almost-sleep, and I blink, my eyes feeling dry and sore. Twisting my head round to look out of the window, I can see that I must have been asleep for at least a couple of hours – the sun has set behind the houses, and while it isn’t quite fully dark yet, the sky is a deep indigo colour, the last dying rays of the sun scorching the horizon a deep orange-y red. The moon is already out, and I can see the beginnings of a glittery frost on the cars parked across the street. I haven’t slept properly since the night before Laurel disappeared, and I find myself sleeping when I don’t expect to. Muffled voices float up through the floorboards again, and I swing my legs round and tiptoe to the door, inching it open just a crack.