And then, of course, the obvious answer came to her. She could call the one person who always took her side.

Except, she thought, with a sudden drop in her stomach. Except that April had lied to her, and she needed to know why.

The walk back to the station had felt painfully long. Hanson had to hold herself aloof for all of it, and even ten minutes of it had been draining.

Jason had asked her, while they’d stood waiting for the coffee to be made, whether things could be all right between them. Whether she could look past the things he’d said in that message. She supposed that meant that he believed her. A small victory.

But she’d said no.

‘How can I be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t trust me?’ she’d asked. ‘How would I feel confident and comfortable knowing how easily he talked you round? What if he came back more persuasively?’ He shook his head, but she went on, ‘And all of those little frustrations he played on. That you don’t like it when I go back home after seeing you. That I don’t message often enough. That I still want to do Friday pub trips with my own team. They’d all still be there, and what Damian has done is to make it blindingly obvious that I don’t make you happy.’

Jason had had no answer, and she’d felt a heavy certainty as she had turned to begin walking back. He’d come to walk next to her, his own tray of coffee the match of hers, and the silence had lasted all the way to the station.

It was only when they reached the bottom of the stairs to CID that he suddenly seemed to wake up.

‘Juliette,’ he said, and his voice had been so … so sad that she’d felt she had to look at him. ‘I know you think this was all based on lack of trust, or dissatisfaction with you, but it wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t. I was taken in by him, and I know you were, too. Can you not understand that he can be as charming to a man as he can be to a woman?’

He gave her a long, beseeching look, and it was deeply uncomfortable because she knew that he was, on some level, right. And yet other people hadn’t fallen for it. The DCI hadn’t. Ben hadn’t. They’d known her for less than a month, as a new colleague, when Damian had first tried to twist their view of her. And they’d dismissed it out of hand.

Jason took a step towards her suddenly, bringing his beseeching gaze that little bit closer.