It’s Tom Wade, the last man to see her sister Jenna alive. And tomorrow they’re setting him free.

Chapter 2

Then – two years earlier

JENNA

Jenna sits back in her seat, fastens the belt around her waist and rests her arms on the armrests. She looks dispassionately at her hands, hanging loosely over the ends. Normally they’d be in her lap, fiddling with a ring or a bracelet. She mentally examines the rest of her body: her heart is beating steadily, her face isn’t flushed and her feet aren’t tapping out a frantic rhythm on the floor of the plane. It is as though someone else – Jenna Fitzgerald’s unafraid clone – is sitting in seat 10A. She searches inside herself for the fear that accompanied her on previous flights. It’s not there. She fires up her imagination and pictures the plane lurching in turbulence, exploding at 30,000 feet or hitting the ground nose first. She waits for her pulse to begin racing and her temples to dampen. Nothing happens. Her phobia of flying has vanished but not because she took a course or visited a hypnotist. She simply no longer cares.

She looks out of the window, the back of her head vibrating against the headrest as the plane accelerates. Erica, beside her, makes a soft whining sound as the plane lifts into the air. She’s twenty-five, one of the ‘babies’ of the group.

‘Are you okay?’ Jenna asks.

‘Could you … could I hold your hand? I hate flying.’

‘Of course.’

The words have barely left Jenna’s mouth when Erica grips her hand, squeezing it so tightly her knuckles knock together. Erica’s eyes are screwed shut, her lips pressed into a hard, thin line, her brow tightly knotted. She looks like one of the Cabbage Patch dolls Fran kept on a shelf in her room. She wouldn’t let Jenna play with it even though she must have been fifteen, while Jenna was only three.

Jenna pushes the memory away and places her free hand over Erica’s. ‘Breathe. Remember what Tom taught us. You are in control of your anxiety. Not the other way round.’

Instinctively, she glances in Tom’s direction. He’s on the other side of the plane and several rows ahead so she can’t actually see him, but she knows he’s there. He flashed a smile at her as she made her way onto the plane. As their eyes met, she felt something inside her twist. It was still there, the attraction she’d felt on the first day they met, the attraction she was certain was mutual.

‘I … can’t.’ Erica forces out the words on short puffs of breath.

‘Let go of your fear,’ Jenna says. ‘You’re living a story you have created. It’s not reality. Tell it no and push it out of your mind.’

Erica shakes her head minutely then squeals as the plane dips to the left.