For a couple of days, Anita was flat out writing newspaper stories and doing radio and TV interviews about the trial, and Rohan would’ve been busy too. He kept missing her calls, then sending apologetic texts in reply. She would suggest a time and place to meet but he would apologise—he hadn’t seen her text until it was too late. When she tried to get their usual text banter happening, Rohan would always answer but in brief, flat messages that tied off the thread. This wasn’t ghosting—he answered every message, always in a friendly or at least polite tone—but he definitely wasn’t communicating in a way that assumed any intimate connection between them. Finally, she had to face the fact he was avoiding her.

Had he suddenly realised he wasn’t interested anymore? Had he grown annoyed by her constant questions about the Santino case? Had he decided that a police detective and a journalist who covered criminal trials was a bad mix? Had he secretly been in a relationship all along? Married even? Had he simply gone off her and so he was dousing her in politeness until she floated off? Was he trying to give her the message as painlessly as possible? Rohan was a considerate guy, so that was the kind of thing he would do. Had he fallen for someone else recently?

Were he and his new girlfriend lying in bed right now, snorting with laughter about what a hopeless joke Anita was?

Anita knew she could spiral into paranoid, self-lacerating thoughts for an impressively long stretch, but the last few months had made her impatient about indulging in shit like that, anything that wasted time or love or energy. She had become more likely than she’d ever been to say, ‘Fuck this,’ and cut through to the centre of things.

She drove to Rohan’s apartment in Alexandria and hit the buzzer outside the building entrance.

‘It’s me,’ she said to the intercom panel.

‘Oh. Oh hi.’ His voice was tinny through the speaker. ‘Come up.’

Anita climbed the flights of stairs in big strides, three at a time, like a little kid trying to feel powerful, and quickly reached Rohan’s floor, where she found him standing in the open doorway.

‘Come in,’ he said.

But she stayed outside on the landing, still puffed from climbing stairs with giant steps. ‘Have you been avoiding me? Am I going crazy?’

‘You’re not crazy. I have been sort of avoiding you. Come inside.’

Anita stayed where she was. ‘Is it because you’ve gone off me?’

‘Not at all. No. God, no. I’ve just been … Look, the way that trial went—I shouldn’t’ve let it get to me, but it did. I wanted us to put him away and we didn’t and now—shit. Look, when I feel like I’ve failed at something, I just—aagghh …’