Thoughts of her fired his determination. He reached up to grip the top of Sanderson’s fence. Pull-ups had once been his forte, but now they got harder with each passing year. He gritted his teeth, bounced on the spot, used all his strength to heave himself up. The wood was sharp as he grasped for purchase. His left leg caught and he almost dropped headfirst, but managed to tumble sideways onto a damp lawn. He lay panting, bones groaning, and squinted up to see if he’d alerted any neighbors. There were no stirrings, so he crept to Sanderson’s back door.

Locked. Paul didn’t want to have to smash a window. He’d have to rely, if possible, on his knowledge of Sanderson. On the fact that he was a man of habits, who would never risk the indignity of being locked out of his own house.

Paul crawled around the patio, testing its slabs; none lifted. He patted the back wall but found no loose bricks. Once he’d checked the neglected plant pots, he turned his attention to the small shed. It was built on a wooden platform with a narrow gap between that and the ground. And there it was: a glimmer of metal. Paul found a stick and poked it beneath the shed, exhaling as he maneuvered a silver key toward him.

He hurried to the back door, slid in the key, and he was inside. Standing in the kitchen of the man who hated him most in the world, looking at a dark blue coffee cup in the sink, a leftover bread crust on a plate.

After more than twenty years, he had infiltrated Sanderson’s life once again.

31.

STEPH

Steph wasn’t sure how much time had passed. She’d been sitting in the church growing colder and colder, a swampy odor rising off her damp clothes. The stained-glass window had darkened in front of her, as if the figures it depicted had been put to bed.

She was haunted by Paul’s collapsed face when she’d asked her question. Had she hit on the truth, or was he just devastated she would think that of him? His phone kept going straight to voicemail, reminding her of Thursday evening, the start of it all, when she’d been trying to reach Freya. A similar feeling clawed at her now, a sense of menace she couldn’t quite pin down. And a rising undercurrent of guilt.

Leaving the church, she walked back through the relentless rain. With every step, the guilt swelled. Hypocrite, the trees seemed to say as the wind shook their wet leaves, showering her with even colder droplets.

Paul’s car was gone from their street. Steph hesitated in the hallway of their building, hearing Heather’s and Brian’s voices above, gathering herself to go up.

She jumped when the door to the ground-floor flat opened and Emma emerged.