‘Oh.’ I felt sick. It went straight to my guts before my brain had time to even process it. I had seen it before, a woman with her throat cut, the dark stain spreading out beneath the chin – I could picture it all too well. Not this time – the leaves had drifted over Anna’s body and I didn’t remember seeing anything but her hand, small and white, her muddy trainers sticking out. But it was the same. Oh God. ‘I was in the woods earlier, with Brandy.’ He would find that out soon, so better if I told him.

He pulled away to look at me. ‘You didn’t see her?’

I needed to keep my own story straight. ‘No, I just – I spotted something in the clearing, I thought maybe a dropped coat or something and I just – I don’t know. Something came over me. I ran.’

His brow furrowed. ‘And what, you just came back here? You didn’t call anyone?’

‘No. I didn’t know it was her.’ Not that it made a difference. I should have called the police anyway, whether or not the pile of clothes in the clearing, the small white hand, had belonged to a woman I knew. A woman who, the last time I’d seen her, had screamed in my face and told me to stay away from her husband. Would the police know that by now? Someone would have told them, surely, plenty of people had witnessed our argument. And hadn’t I wished her gone, sometimes, after that, in the privacy of my head? Not like this, though. Maybe just moved away or happily remarried, whatever made her step out of the way of Alex and me. Was that why they’d come to question me, the row? But then why hadn’t they asked about it?

He stroked my cheek, tender, bereft. ‘Why did you do it?’

I shook my head. I couldn’t explain without telling him everything, and I never wanted him to find out. ‘I don’t know. I panicked. I didn’t even process what I’d seen. I’m so sorry, Alex. I just – believe me, I had no idea at all it was her. I didn’t know it was a person, not really.’

He sighed, ran his hands over his face. His eyes, like Marilyn’s, were red and bloodshot. Anna’s death would devastate so many people. She had lived in this town all her life, like Alex. Whereas me – I was just an interloper, in his life and in Coldwater. ‘Rach, it doesn’t look good. Anna dead, and you ran away and didn’t call it in.’