Harper felt her cheeks glow red-hot, and lifted her glass to her face to cool it.

At the end of the evening, Harper had drawn close to Amy, who had gazed amusedly into her eyes. But at the last second, she’d panicked, swerved, kissed Amy’s cheek and practically ran away. She’d completely blown it. No, she wouldn’t be calling Amy for a few weeks yet. Not until the sting of the shame of that pathetic encounter had faded. But even so, there was hope there, and a sense of possibility: Amy had sent her a text message afterwards, a red lipstick kiss emoticon, followed by a single x.

As the sun set on the final day of evidence gathering, Harper stood on the shore where Lauren had stood a few weeks previously, looking out at the water. Harper had done all she could for this poor dead woman with only her bones surviving. The black box containing the remains was a few metres away, waiting to be taken by the undertakers and laid to rest elsewhere. The case itself would stay open, filed as unsolved until evidence emerged to prove beyond a doubt who this woman was, and how she came to lie in the New Riverby reservoir for all this time, undiscovered. Harper would move on to the next case, but she felt this would be one of those she’d find it hard to forget; partly because it was linked in her mind with that other tragic case, Lauren Tranter’s.

During drinks, Amy had asked her about it. “You really had a thing for that case, didn’t you?”

Harper nodded mutely.

“Why do you think that was?”

A first date was not the time to bring up heavy subjects, so Harper had made a few vague noises about feeling sorry for Lauren, and the fact that Victoria Settle’s case seemed to suggest a link, that it had happened before. Then, knowing she hadn’t really answered the question, she’d gone to the bar and bought them both another drink. When she got back to the table, although Amy’s journalistic instinct must have been urging her to dig deeper, she’d allowed Harper to move the conversation on. One day, I’ll tell you, thought Harper. But perhaps the right occasion would never come. She would leave it, for now, anyway. Let Amy think there was some history there, a painful past involving a pregnancy, because that was certainly part of the truth. The rest would come out, in time. She was pretty sure there would be time.