‘Owes her?’ Pamela screws her face up as she screeches the words out, before looking around the restaurant and lowering her voice. ‘He doesn’t owe that bitch anything. He didn’t do anything to Laurel, Anna.’ Her cheeks flush, and she fumbles for the wine glass in front of her, taking a healthy swig and leaving her lips stained with purple.

‘Oh, Pamela, come on. I know you still love him, but even you have to admit that things simply don’t stack up when it comes to Dominic. He doesn’t have an alibi . . .’

‘No, he doesn’t, but those roads aren’t covered by any CCTV. He didn’t stop anywhere, he was merely driving around trying to pluck up the courage to tell Fran that he didn’t want to be with her anymore. He was going to tell her that he wanted to be with me.’ Pamela sips at the wine again, more sedately this time, as the waiter approaches our table.

‘Just coffee for me, please.’ I wave him away and turn back to Pamela. ‘Pamela, think about things rationally. The person who saw Laurel getting into a car picked Dominic’s out of a range of photos. And there’s the sock – you know about the sock, right?’

Pamela blinks. ‘It was a nosebleed. Dominic told me Laurel had a nosebleed and I believe him. He didn’t do this, Anna. Are you really going to let him go to prison for something he had no part in?’

I grit my teeth, trying not to give in to the frustration that courses through my body. The woman is delusional, she has to be. And to think that when I first met her I thought she was so calm, so together, so . . . everything that I wanted to be. ‘She didn’t have a nosebleed, Pamela. And even if she did, it wouldn’t have been Dominic who dealt with it in the first place, it would have been me. Dominic was never there.’

‘Please, Anna, please try and see things from my point of view. Why would Dominic hurt Laurel? She was his daughter, he loved her. He’s not a violent man, he couldn’t do something like this. You forget, I know him.’

I cast my mind back to the events of the days following Laurel’s disappearance and I have to beg to differ. I remember the way Dominic grabbed Fran’s arms, forcing her back against the kitchen worktops. The way Fran whispered to her mother on the phone about his unpredictable behaviour, the way he threw his glass, smashing it to smithereens, and I can’t agree with Pamela that he isn’t violent.

‘You used to know him. You weren’t there, Pamela. You didn’t see the way things could be in that house.’ I reach down to pick up my bag, ready to leave even though my coffee hasn’t arrived.