It could have been him, of course, but why then would he reach out to me? Surely it would be easiest to let me take the rap, the obvious suspect.

He nodded reluctantly. ‘The police, they still think it was you?’

We had reached the lake now, a small path winding down the side of it, sadly littered with bottles and plastic bags. The kids around here had so little to do. A cold wind rippled the dark surface of the water.

‘I don’t know – they haven’t charged me, obviously. I think someone’s framing me. I didn’t do it. You know that, right? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have messaged me.’ Or be alone with me on this deserted path, I thought to myself.

He didn’t say anything for a minute. ‘Look, I don’t know for sure, I’ll just be honest. How could I? I hardly even knew Anna that well. I mean – it couldn’t go anywhere. It was just – both of us needed something else, I suppose. Outside our marriages. I know it sounds sordid, like, but it wasn’t. I cared about her.’

How strange that this man and I were the opposite sides of a square made up of us and Anna and Alex. Their shattered marriage our opportunity for love.

‘When it happened, I saw it on the news like everyone else,’ he said. ‘That a woman was found dead in the woods. I sent her a few messages, asking had she seen it. I never thought it might be . . . well, anyway, they released her name later that day. Couldn’t tell anyone, of course. Had to hide it from my – my wife.’

What a way to find out. I watched his profile, the pain evident beneath his self-control. Could I trust him, though? He was a total stranger.

‘The police never spoke to you?’

‘No. I kept waiting for a call from them – I was meant to see her that night. The one she died. My, em – my wife was away for work.’ He sounded so ashamed saying that, my wife, and I wondered about this unknown woman, also involved in this tangled case without even realising it.

‘You sent her text messages? Anna?’

Those would have been on her phone if so, surely, and the police would have found them by now.

‘No – we talked through a kind of secure app thing. It doesn’t stay on the phone.’

I’d heard about things like this, apps that deleted messages right away. For people who didn’t want to leave a trace. Maybe, then, the police didn’t even know she’d been seeing someone.

I realised what he’d said – he was supposed to be with her the night she died. ‘But you didn’t see her in the end?’

‘Well, no. She cancelled last minute.’

‘So . . . I’m sorry, Ciaran, just to be clear, you didn’t see Anna at all that night?’