‘Just wanted to know the background,’ Freya says. ‘Did you know Georgia Riley was pregnant?’

‘Was she? No.’ Steph’s mouth turns down, her chin wobbles, and for a moment Freya thinks she might cry.

‘Six months along. You okay?’ she asks softly.

‘Yeah, fine. Just me and Robin… we… split up.’ She shrugs miserably. ‘If we were together long enough to even call it that.’

‘Oh, Steph, I’m sorry.’ Freya goes to hug her, even despite her sweaty look, but Steph pulls away.

‘It’s fine, really, it’s fine. I knew it would happen, it was inevitable. Anyway,’ she says, pulling herself together. ‘In response to your question, Trevor Stevens had no drugs prescribed, antidepressants or otherwise. So nothing that supports your theory of a suicide. But I found something new about his death.’

‘What?’ Freya asks, her curiosity piqued.

‘I went back over the pathology reports,’ Steph continues, then takes a swig from her water bottle. ‘I reviewed all the photographs from the post-mortem. There was considerable soot in the larynx, trachea and bronchi, and evidence of heat trauma to the mucosa.’

Freya stares at her, confused. ‘What does that mean?’ she asks.

‘Trevor Stevens was still breathing after he hit the tree. The injuries from the crash didn’t kill him.’ Steph looks at Freya, her face grim. ‘The fire did it. He was burnt alive.’

44

Robin sleeps late – a welcome change, waking up slowly, without the frantic beep of his alarm. After he left Steph, he spent the rest of the evening on his sofa, the takeaway pizza a poor substitute for the delicious-smelling lasagne he hadn’t been able to sample.

He briefly debates calling her, but doesn’t get further than that. There’s no point. He hasn’t miraculously changed his mind; he still knows that the idea of kids terrifies him.

He gets out of bed, walks down the stairs to his kitchen and stares into his empty fridge. He puts a coat on over his T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, trainers on his feet and walks down to the Co-op, where he buys bacon and eggs and warm freshly baked bread. The air is cool, the sky grey, but it cheers him to be out of the house and actually getting some fresh air into his lungs. Maybe Steph isn’t so off the mark with her constant exercise, he thinks. Maybe a run could do him some good.

But first things first.

Home, he cooks the bacon, fries an egg, and sandwiches it between huge slabs of crusty bread. Tomato ketchup drips onto the table as he eats it, washing it down with two mugs of coffee.

It reminds him of break-ups in his past. His first stop would always be his sister.