I held my breath, listening to his footsteps fade away towards the kitchen, but just as I released a long gasp I heard him coming closer again, loud footsteps on the bare tiles. The door squeaked open and he was in the room with me. Don’t breathe, Casey, don’t breathe. I had gone back to calling myself Casey in my inner voice, as if I’d known all along that Rachel was not the real me. Rachel was a nice woman who wore anoraks and worked in a dog shelter and grew herbs, but she was just a shell I’d built around myself. Casey Adams, as lean and scrappy as a street dog, was still in there. The one who’d do anything to survive.

Alex went over to the desk, and I heard him rooting about in the papers just as I had, as if looking for something. I shifted a little under the table and he stopped and glanced round for a moment. My heart almost stopped. But then he went out of the room again, and I heard his footsteps retreating. Then the front door opened and shut and his key turned in the lock. It took me a few moments just to get my breath back, desperately thankful I hadn’t been caught, but then another worry surfaced. If Alex had locked the door behind him, was I stuck in here?

I crept along the corridor in case he was still outside the farmhouse, but then I saw his van disappearing, far too fast, out of the drive and down the lane. As I’d thought, I was locked in. I’d put the key back on the door frame after I opened the door, not thinking I’d need it. Had Alex found it strange, that it wasn’t locked, or had he assumed the police did it? But now what? I was stuck inside the house of the woman I was suspected of killing. I would be caught here, and this time they would certainly charge me and try me as a murderer and I would be found guilty and go to prison for life, and there would be no second chances. Oh God. I was trapped.

I sank down on to the cold floor, feeling despair flood over me. Someone was maybe trying to frame me for a murder I didn’t commit, but how could I fight them when I didn’t even know who they were? So much of the evidence pointed to me, and I’d found nothing to help me defend myself here in Anna’s house.

Come on, honey. Get it together. Help yourself.