Rohan did a jokey wince. ‘But you know, I can handle it if you want to tell me. In my career, I’ve seen human beings at their worst. I can take it.’

She shoved him in the ribs with her socked feet. ‘I know you can, detective. But I’m fine. If I talk about it, I’ll inflate small stuff into a bigger deal than it should be. Have I warned you I have a tendency to do that?’

‘You have. And I’ve accepted that challenge.’

The evening after that, Anita’s plan was to keep to herself. Walking up King Street from the bus stop, she passed a bar with half-price happy hour cocktails. She went inside and ordered a margarita. The rush of the tequila coupled with the astringency of the lime and the mouth-puckering hit of the salt seemed to strip away the fuzz in her head so she could think more clearly—well, at least she told herself that was so. She drank a second margarita and then a third.

Anita knew she had a propensity to lodge a thought in her skull and whip it up into something way bigger than the thought deserved to be. It annoyed her that for years she’d wasted so much energy on paranoid fantasies and dangers that didn’t really exist. Meanwhile, she’d failed to appreciate the very real peril Stacey had been in. Sure, Anita had been worried about the situation with Matt, but she never ever imagined the catastrophe that had been brewing all along.

The jolt of the murders in the Earlwood house had knocked some clarity into her stupid head, but Anita could still be troubled by irrational thoughts that adhered to her brain cells like burrs. Sometimes she would give in to the anxiety and scurry around to investigate if her fears were founded in any reality, checking and double-checking until she calmed down.

A therapist had once advised her that she should not indulge in such frantic checking, but instead she should just sit with any paranoid notion until it subsided. Anita generally tried to follow that method. But sometimes, like tonight, she couldn’t manage it. She needed to march right up to her anxious thought and scotch it once and for all.

She flagged down a cab outside the margarita bar and, en route to Earlwood, she sent Paula a text.

Are you home? A x

Yes. Just watching TV. P x

I’ll be there in five mins. A x

When Paula opened the front door, she was wearing track pants, a comfortably sagging old T-shirt and ugg boots. The blonde hair was pulled back in a scrunchie.

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Anita. ‘You’re in comfy-at-home-alone mode.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s great to see you. Come in.’

The two women wandered into the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.