Davis came to mind, but the thought of handing over his name on a silver platter, asking them to go poking around in my past, broadcasting my current whereabouts – it was too dangerous. What if Ellie hadn’t told him after all? What if I was wrong? I couldn’t risk it.

‘What is it?’ McKnight asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You sure about that, Miss King?’

I clenched my jaw. ‘I’m sure.’

‘You and Mr Nolan,’ McKnight said. ‘You were just friends?’

Heat rose to my cheeks, giving me away. I should’ve been better at this, like Vera, able to turn on the grief in her voice at the drop of a hat, able to give the 911 performance of a lifetime, a performance that had become her reality.

‘Miss King?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We were just friends. I’m friends with Vera, too, remember?’

McKnight pulled a pen from his pocket, clicked it three times. ‘Yes, Ms Abernathy mentioned that. And we followed up with some of your neighbors, and they agree with how she portrayed it, that you all were quite close.’

My thoughts turned to Maggie, who’d comforted me only yesterday. Could she have said something like that, cast doubt on me so easily?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We were. Are.’

He tucked his pen away. ‘Most women I know, women Ms Abernathy’s age, at least, not sure they’d be too happy with a woman like you around all the time.’

‘A woman like me?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Younger. You know.’

My eyes widened. Sometimes I swore that men were incapable of seeing women as anything but objects. To McKnight, I was evidence. A point-by-point analysis in his case. ‘What do you even mean by that?’

He tossed his hands in the air. ‘My point is, was Ms Abernathy okay with you constantly hanging around her husband?’

I felt as if I’d been slapped, and for a second I was back at college, watching that stupid video for the first time. Remembering how you could be judged – snap, like that – how, at the end of the day, it was always your fault. Not the guys goading you on, or the ones passing images of you around like porn. No, you were guilty until proven innocent; men, the opposite.

‘Miss King?’

I practically spit out the words. ‘I wasn’t hanging around her husband. I was spending time with them. We were friends. That’s all. I would never do anything to hurt Vera.’

It was true and untrue at the same time. I hated myself for it.

‘Let me be even more direct,’ McKnight said, letting his words hang in the air as my heart thumped murderously. ‘Were you and Mr Nolan romantically involved?’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘No, of course not. Like I said, we were friends. Good friends.’