‘I need to go back to Detective Williams,’ I said, words tumbling out of my mouth too fast now. ‘I need to talk to her again. I need to say it’s not as simple as I said it was. She needs to back off from my family until she’s got all the facts—’

‘Rachel!’ Amber was shouting. ‘Stop it. Stop talking. You’re not going back to the police. There’s something I need to tell you – something you’ve needed to know for a very long time – that will change everything. So please just shut up and listen to me.’

LILY

Nick was oddly upbeat when he got home from work. He called out to me as he slammed the door, then bounded through to the kitchen, where I was stirring a pasta sauce on the hob, a glass of red wine at my elbow.

‘Something smells good,’ he said, leaning in to give me a kiss, his tongue unexpectedly slipping into my mouth. I could taste the whisky on his breath. ‘What we having?’

‘It’s Bolognese,’ I said. I’d squeezed it out from a pouch I’d bought at the deli: since Christmas, I hadn’t really felt like cooking. It spoke of hearth and home, of family. If I risked roasting a chicken, I’d inevitably end up salting it with my tears. ‘You seem chipper,’ I said, trying not to sound judgemental about the fact.

‘The Hutton deal closed today,’ he said. ‘That place is off the scale. It’s not just the house. Acres of land, workers’ cottages. It should complete next Friday. Serious pay day.’ He squeezed his body next to me and I dropped the wooden spoon into the pan. ‘I was thinking, why don’t we fuck all this off and go to Paris for the weekend? Celebrate?’

‘Nick… It’s Sophie’s hen night that weekend.’

‘You invited?’

I took a sip of my wine, feeling myself flush. ‘Not as such, but I don’t think she’s really thought it all through yet.’

His face crumpled up with sympathy. I suspected he was thinking back fondly to Josh’s three-day extravaganza in Amsterdam, where he’d been the star guest, but he at least had the good grace to keep it to himself.

‘Hear me out,’ he said. ‘Right now, we need to be invincible. That woman’s trying to destroy our family, and we can’t let her. We need to double down. Rachel needs to see us as a unit. We’re her stability – she’ll come back to us, I know she will. All this shit is going to blow over.’

‘But they’re treating us like criminals!’ I said, both exasperated and comforted by his blithe confidence.

‘It’s a bullshit case, and we’re gonna fight it. And then we’re going to destroy that fucking charlatan. How’d you get on with Deborah?’