‘Oh, absolutely,’ I say, far too enthusiastically. ‘She’d threaten him on the phone as well.’ I look between the two officers, hoping that direct eye contact will distract from the other parts of my body that are letting me down. ‘I tried to reassure him that she’d never follow through, but . . .’ I choke, allowing a tear to fall.

‘It certainly all seems to point to Mrs Chandler being culpable,’ says Robson. ‘But there’s just one thing that doesn’t quite add up.’

‘What’s that?’ I ask, forcing my face to look as if I care.

‘It’s the shoe print,’ says Robson, her annoying face begging to be punched.

‘What about it?’ I say. ‘I thought you said it matched a pair of trainers you found at Naomi’s house.’

‘Yes, but they’re the same size as all the shoes we found at your house, Mrs Talbot.’

‘So?’ I ask, finding it incredibly difficult to disguise my irritability. ‘Thirty-eight is the average shoe size for British women.’

‘Yes . . . it is,’ she muses, frustratingly slowly.

‘But . . .?’

‘But Naomi Chandler is a forty-one, so she couldn’t possibly have been wearing them.’

What? I think frantically of the lengths I’ve gone to, to pull this off, leaving no stone unturned or a single detail to chance. She’s calling my bluff. Of course they’re Naomi’s shoes; they were in her wardrobe in the spare bedroom.

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ I ask, willing the involuntary spasm in my jaw to stop.

‘They’re her mother’s,’ says Robson, her eyes boring into mine. ‘You took the only pair that weren’t hers.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is my fifth book . . . my fifth book! If you’d have told me five years ago that I’d publish just one novel, I would have talked you out of it. My ideas weren’t good enough. I didn’t have the imagination. I certainly didn’t have the time. And anyway, what was the point? There was a million-to-one chance that it would be picked up – that kind of thing only ever happened to other people, younger people, cleverer people, better-connected people . . .

Except I’m proof that you don’t need to be any of those.

Now, I’m firmly of the belief that if you want to write a book, what have you got to lose by giving it a whirl? Get the words down on the page, find yourself a fabulous agent like Tanera Simons @ Darley Anderson to champion you, brilliant editors like Catherine Richards at Minotaur and Vicki Mellor at Pan Macmillan to impart their wisdom, and you’ll be surprised how quickly the wonderous team around you grows . . . Nettie Finn, Joseph Brosnan, Hector deJean, Dakota Cohen, Amber Cortes, Rebecca Lloyd, Rebecca Needes, Mary Darby, Georgia Fuller, Kristina Egan, Sheila David, Rosanna Bellingham . . . all go the extra mile to get their author’s words read by as many people as possible.