Lizzie turned up the heating. She wasn’t sure how cold the day actually was but she was racked by little shivers. “Is there any news of Johnny?” she asked. She’d wanted to know from the moment Jules had stepped into her cell. “They wouldn’t tell me anything in there. I spent hours wondering whether he had been found or—”

“Johnny’s still missing,” Jules said. “That’s why they arrested you when those useless lawyers told you to walk out.” She shot Lizzie a look. “They are trying to connect Johnny’s disappearance to Amelia’s death. You were the last person to see him, and with the CCTV footage, it looks pretty bad for you. In the end, though, they had to agree to bail because there was nothing—nothing forensic, anyway—that suggested that a crime had been committed.”

Lizzie’s shudders were increasing. Whether it was relief or shock or some sort of fear, she wasn’t sure. Fear for Johnny, fear for herself...

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she said. “I can’t explain any of it.”

Jules didn’t answer immediately and Lizzie sensed there was a lot more she hadn’t told her. “They’re planning to dredge the river,” Jules said. “They think that there was an argument between you and Johnny, and that you attacked him with something and then pushed him over the Embankment. That explosion—” She glanced at Lizzie again, her face troubled. “What the hell was that? Do you really not remember?”

“No,” Lizzie said. “I don’t remember that and I don’t remember what happened in the three minutes before the CCTV picked me up on the bench.” She knew she would need to tell Jules about the psychometry at some point but now wasn’t the time. She was so tired she could hardly think straight and she wanted to get clear in her own mind first what part the psychometry might have played.

She looked out of the window. The crawl of traffic out of the city had been slow. Now they were passing endless rows of suburban houses and grey acres of concrete and tarmac in the equally grey afternoon. She was still feeling a sense of disconnection from normality. “I certainly didn’t attack Johnny or push him into the river,” she said. “I know that. And I don’t think he’s dead. In fact, I’m certain of it. I have a sense...”

“Arthur doesn’t think so either.” Jules still looked troubled. “I don’t know how you guys can be so sure. I’m all for optimism but you have to face the fact that you might just be hoping for the best. I suppose he could have run away—” She sighed. “But Arthur said he wouldn’t vanish without getting in touch.”

“I wish I knew who the other person was who saw Johnny that night,” Lizzie said.

“What?” Jules frowned at her.

“Someone else saw Johnny that night,” Lizzie said. “Someone gave him a lift to my flat. He said he had dropped his phone in their car. I know they found the phone in my flat,” she ignored Jules’s attempt to interrupt, “so either Johnny was lying to me, or he left the phone there deliberately, or someone else put it there later.”