‘It’s Kate,’ says a familiar voice from beyond the door. ‘Could I have a word?’

‘Stay here,’ Caroline hisses to Fran. ‘Wait until it’s safe to leave. We don’t want her to know you’ve been in here.’

Fran nods in agreement. How much of their conversation did Kate overhear as she crept up the garden? She looked suspicious, no doubt about that. She glances at her watch as Caroline slips out of the door – 10.21 p.m.

She waits, watching the door, listening. After what feels like an age, she looks at her watch again to see it’s 10.24 p.m. She eases herself up from her chair, crosses the room, and listens at the door. Nothing. No argument, no raised voices. But that doesn’t mean they’re not still in the corridor.

She moves over to the window, pulls back the curtains and, after some frantic fiddling with the ancient hook on the sash window, slides it up and steps out into the flower bed. Apologising to the snowdrop she crushed under her shoe, she makes her way back round the front of the house, keeping close to the wall. All the curtains are drawn and her breath slows as she reaches the back of the house. No one’s seen her, she’s safe.

‘Hello, Geraldine.’ Damian puffs a cloud of cigarette smoke in her direction as she approaches the porch. Before she can answer he whips out his phone and points it at her. The shutter fires and Fran raises a hand to her eyes, half blinded by the flash. When she lowers it again, Damian has gone.

Chapter 19

Then

JENNA

Dinner is the worst kind of hell. Jenna can feel Tom watching her from the other end of the table and she’s steadfastly refusing to meet his eye. There was no avoiding Kate though. She zeroed in on her in the queue outside the restaurant and angled her away from the others. She kept their chat short and her voice low. Tom had returned to the chalet shortly after Jenna left, she said. He was ‘heartbroken’, ‘a shell of a man’ and ‘utterly contrite’. He was going to cancel the course and get on the first plane to the UK to check himself into a rehab facility for anger management but she’d talked him down. Afterwards, they meditated and practised mindfulness. The last thing either of them needed, Kate said, her eyes roaming Jenna’s face, was for him to fall ill again. When Kate asked her if she’d told anyone, Jenna shook her head. ‘The world needs more people like you,’ Kate said, then hurried to the front of the queue as the maître d’ opened the restaurant doors.