With nothing else to do, I turned to the task in hand. Alison Harper. Don Samson. Not knowing how else to find people, I went to Google. There were a lot of Alison Harpers in the area, most of them on Facebook, and I had to join the site in order to contact them. My profile didn’t have a picture and I kept each message vague, saying I was investigating Anna’s death and wanted to ask them some questions. Maybe they’d think I was a private detective or even a police officer. I’d called myself Jenna Adams, and wondered what my mother would think about that, her name living on. Not that it was her real name – she’d changed it as soon as she could escape from her rural childhood in Devon. Fake names ran in the family.

While on Facebook I had a good look through Anna’s friends list, what I could see of it anyway. Alex was there, a black-and-white picture I’d never seen before of him laughing on top of a tractor, handsome in an open-necked shirt. Was it strange for Anna to still be Facebook friends with her ex? I had no idea of the etiquette. I clicked through both of their pictures, but hardly anything was public except for one lovely shot of them with Sam, on a picnic blanket on a beach somewhere, the same one framed in Anna’s bedroom. Anna was in shorts and a jumper, her long legs thrown out, her fair hair windswept. She’d had a long, slightly pinched face, beautiful all the same. Alex was holding Sam in front of him, tickling him. He was topless, tanned, lean. I was lonely for that body, and not sure I’d ever get to touch it again. Sam appeared to be screaming with laughter in the picture, Alex smiling, Anna laughing too. So why had they broken up? It was definitely over before I came along. Wasn’t it?

The identity of Don Samson, car mechanic, was easier to trace on Google. Mechanics were quite likely to have back problems and need a massage, weren’t they? No one else with that name locally. Don wasn’t on Facebook, sensible man, so I decided I’d go and see him. I opened the door of the flat, looked up and down the depressing linoed corridor. No sign of any police. And they hadn’t said I couldn’t go out. I wasn’t actually a prisoner, although I might feel like one.

Outside the flat, a car was parked – some nondescript red one. I never knew the makes of cars. There was a man inside, alone, drinking a cup of takeaway coffee. Was that the police, watching me? Just in case, I turned and slipped out of the street the other way, while he was looking ahead.