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Chapter 1

10 May 2019 – 8.15 a.m. – Gloucester Police Station

Interview with Natasha Redwood, deputy head of Helesbury Primary School

I had my suspicions from the start. In my job, I interact with hundreds of people every day, you see. Something never sat quite right with me, but I couldn’t ever put my finger on it. It was a gut instinct – you know that feeling? There was this void opening up between Evie and Miranda when they had previously been best friends, inseparable, for over a year. Then along comes Verity, and suddenly, Evie is a different person. So yes, if you’re asking were there any clues, then, yes, of course, in hindsight – oh, the joy of hindsight! I can look back now and realise that everything that didn’t add up at the time, that I pushed aside, were glaringly obvious clues. I should have said something sooner. Maybe then things would have ended differently. But you don’t, do you? You ignore the clues – you always ignore them. Even when they are screaming at you in the face.

Chapter 2

Before

The woman walked along the beach, the wind whipping her hair across her face. She hadn’t wanted to come out that morning, but when Bernie, her eight-year-old West Highland terrier, had come and sat next to her feet, looking up at her with his little watery eyes, she couldn’t bear it any longer. Once in the bracing air, she hadn’t felt glad that she was out in the way that people often did; she thought only of the cosy warm embers of the fire lingering in the hearth and the tin of cookies she had baked with the grandchildren two days before, now perfectly chewy and begging to be dipped into a cup of hot chocolate. But she kept pushing forward, hat pulled firmly over her ears, scarf wrapped tightly around her neck and hands stuffed firmly in her pockets.

She watched as Bernie raced ahead, sniffing in between the small wooden boats moored away on the shore near the brambles. She never understood who owned these boats – most of them looked so old and decrepit. The row of boats came to an end and then a strip of brightly coloured beach huts came into view. The woman had been intending to turn around and head back to the main path that would lead her back home to the warm fire and chocolate, but Bernie had scampered off ahead and was already at the second beach hut, sniffing and cocking his leg. The huts ran for another hundred yards or so. Only a little further – she would turn around at the end of them and head home.