The new discovery had thrown everything into confusion, including Emma’s own conviction about what to do with the address, even how to approach Zeb. Steph’s feral roar had rattled her soul. The harrowing mental image of Freya’s familiar Puffa jacket soaked in blood had seemed to raise all the stakes. What had happened to her? Why was Steph keeping secrets from the police, from Paul? Why was he keeping secrets from her? And if Zeb had lied about the amount of time he and Freya had spent together, how might that muddy the waters of the investigation, even if it was entirely innocent—as hopefully, surely, it was? Then Emma would loop back to worrying about Zeb in general, imagining more cuts on his hands, convincing herself he was slaving under unsafe conditions while Robin turned him irreversibly against her.

She’d had to escape the house, the street. But she couldn’t simply run away. She was tangled in this tragedy and she had to know what she was dealing with.

Now something made her stare more attentively toward the maisonette. Was it just the shifting light? She waited, her breath shortening, then glimpsed it again: a shadow behind the tatty upper-floor curtains. It seemed formless at first, striping across the window, until it stilled and took on the outline of a person. Emma lifted her phone and snatched a photo. The shadow moved and became fluid, melting into the general darkness of the interior.

She waited. The shadow didn’t reappear and the house became lifeless again. Should she go and knock? Her nerves revved at the thought, and the longer she sat without seeing anything further, the more she wondered if she’d been duped by an optical illusion. Go home, tell the police, back away. But she was here now. She needed to understand what this place was that had wound Steph into such a frenzy.

Her palms were clammy as she crossed the road and stood before the house. She counted herself down like she used to at school when she was working up the courage to step into a homeroom. Different scenarios motored through her head, options for what to do if somebody answered. But nobody did. Not at the second knock, or the third.

And the photo on her phone was hopelessly blurry. The shape she’d captured could have been a woman or a man, could have been a stain, could have been a ghost.

—

When she returned home, she found a crowd of journalists on the street, drinking coffee and talking into mobiles, a much larger group than the one or two who’d been hanging around earlier.

“Miss Brighton,” one hollered as she approached. It unsettled her that they knew her name. She tried to push past but a microphone was thrust into her face.

“Do you know where Paul Harlow is?” the journalist asked.

Emma couldn’t help pausing. “What?”