I answer by pulling him toward me, kissing him deeply and wrapping my legs round his waist.

“Do I take that as a yes?” His voice is soft. He rolls his weight on top of me and I feel his skin melt into mine.

I wake up with the sun shining through the window and a sudden moment of clarity.

The best way to get away with murder is for there to have never been one.

Corpus delicti. No body, no crime.

If everyone thought Leah was still alive, then I couldn’t possibly have killed her. It is surprisingly simple. There are only two major issues: the body in the freezer at the cabin and the fact that eventually people will realize that I am not Leah. Yes, I could pretend for a few weeks, but eventually I would either fuck up, or my worlds would collide in some terrible moment. Or I’d just run out of hours in the day to be both. So, Leah will still need to disappear. But in a way that makes people think she is alive. She just needs to disappear from London and stop working with Angels Inc.

She could find God? I stifle a laugh, trying hard not to wake Tom. Or go to India to find herself? Could I make that stick? She did yoga occasionally; could she go on a retreat or something and have an epiphany about splashing her life all over social media? Or could she simply go on holiday and then disappear? Somewhere so far away that no one would ever look around here. I could fly to Thailand on her passport and then make my way back somehow via a different airport, and fly into the UK as myself.

Tom shifts beside me as I start to make a mental list of the things I will need to do to make this actually work. He is still half asleep as he curls himself around me. I am the perfect fit as his little spoon.

“Morning, beautiful,” he whispers in my ear and I press myself back into his embrace, list forgotten. I even manage to forget that tomorrow is Friday and I need to go home. To him.

Chapter Seven

The thought of seeing Chris makes my skin crawl. And how am I going to be natural around him? How will I hide my lies so he never suspects?

We live just outside the center of Guildford, in an old Victorian house with tiled steps leading up to a blue front door. Half a million quid doesn’t go very far round here, and we were lucky to have found it, putting in an offer after only a cursory look around; a place like this doesn’t stay available for long, with its huge living room, original sash windows, and a decent-sized garden complete with decked patio area. We even have the second bedroom that Chris has commandeered as his home office and man cave. He spends an inordinate amount of time in there, looking at the huge screens installed over his desk. I still don’t really understand his job, something about trend-spotting on a macroeconomic level. He thinks it would be beyond my comprehension and so offers me no further detail. I overheard him talking to a colleague once, about how he was a little surprised I had managed to qualify as an accountant, and wondering how I held down a lucrative job despite my intellectual shortcomings. When I was ten years old I joined Mensa. Not that he remembers.