In the overheated break room, I fought to get a hold of myself. Come on. Use everything they give you. Those awful photographs, those were evidence, and I hadn’t been allowed to see much of that. Was there something in them that could help me – a clue that only I would be able to interpret? Think, Casey, think.

Sitting there, my wrists sweaty and chafed, my entire body sour and damp, I tried to reconstruct what I’d seen that day, detail by detail. Do you remember those Spot the Difference quizzes you used to get in magazines? I was very good at those. There must be something I could do to save myself. But as I sat there, I found I couldn’t think of a single thing.

Rachel

Rachel

Who knew my phone number? Marilyn, Jeremy, Alex, a few people I trusted, or had done at least. How on earth had this person got it? Anna’s lover. I’m the person Anna was seeing. Can we meet?

The mysterious man! He did exist after all, assuming it was a man. I read the text over and over. No name was given. Possibly the last person to see her alive. Did he spend the night with her? Were the police pursuing this possibility, one step ahead of me? If this man had slept over at Anna’s house the night she died, what time had he left? Why had she gone to the woods that morning, and when exactly? Was she alone, or had she arranged to meet someone?

Gripping my phone so tight I left prints on the screen, I knew it was a mistake to follow this up. I knew that every rogue action I took made me look more guilty. I, of all people, was aware how important appearances were in a murder enquiry. But I couldn’t help it, I had to know. And that was why I texted back. Meet me by the memorial. Ten minutes.

I pulled my hoody over my head and left the library, hoping no one would recognise me, notorious murderer Racy Casey, out on the streets of this quiet tourist town.

In a few minutes I’d reached the centre of town, where a war memorial was set in a square of benches. It was almost five now, so the place had emptied out. The shopkeepers were putting down their shutters. A few people shuffling about, the elderly or dispossessed, kids with nowhere else to go. No one who looked like Anna’s possible lover. I was racking my brain to understand how this new information fitted in with everything else. If Anna actually was seeing someone, why did she have such a go at me in the street that time? Why had she been so jealous of me and Alex?