She needed to get out of this room, away from the online news reports, and find some way to decompress. Better to avoid going back to her own house in this agitated state. Better to avoid contact with Anita right now, with the risk more talk about Kendra could increase the pressure. She must find some other way to anchor herself.

One thought came to mind. She decided to follow it and not let herself interrogate the thought too much.

Paula swivelled her office chair back around to the computer, clicked on the patient records and found a street address for Rochelle Ferguson. She waved goodbye to Jemma on her way past the front desk and headed out to her car.

Turning into Rochelle’s street, Paula slowed down, checking the house numbers. She wasn’t sure how to go about this without behaving like a stalker. Well, in truth, she was a kind of stalker. Maybe she should pretend she was lost or interested in buying real estate in the area. She berated herself for not having prepared a cover story.

She pulled her car over to the gutter, across the road and one house down from the Ferguson place. The house had been subjected to an ugly renovation in the seventies, with an outer skin of red brick, aluminium windows and garish blue roof tiles, but the hard edges were softened by foliage from lovely big trees and banks of overgrown shrubs. Paula had no idea if Rochelle would be home or even if she still lived at this address.

By now it was almost five o’clock, late June, with the sun already sinking, which meant Paula’s silver-grey car might hopefully fade into the dusk light. When a man walking his dog down the footpath glanced at her sitting there, she snatched up her phone and feigned sending a text. She didn’t want to arouse suspicion.

She should leave right now. Giving in to this impulse was ludicrous. If Rochelle walked down the footpath and saw her doctor sitting in a parked car outside her house, the poor woman would freak out. Paula should definitely go.

As she put on her indicator to do a U-turn, a Mazda approached from the other direction and pulled into the Fergusons’ driveway. Rochelle emerged from the driver’s seat, wearing a pale blue pantsuit with the logo of the beautician business embroidered on the chest pocket. She went around to open the boot of the car and started to unload bags of shopping.

The front door of the house swung open and Brody galloped out onto the porch and down the steps. An older woman—presumably Rochelle’s mother—stayed back, leaning against the doorframe, waving hello.