He nods. ‘I was at work, and she called me out of the blue.’

‘How long had it been since you last spoke to her?’ Oli asks.

‘I hadn’t spoken to her since that night at the house.’

‘The night Evelyn died?’ presses Oli.

He nods, his face pinched with guilt. ‘I wanted to talk to her—so many times I thought about it, but I don’t know, it’s hard to explain. It was all so weird. That part of my life seems like it happened to someone else. I mean, you see stuff on the news and you process it, but you just don’t think about the people being real. And then suddenly it was happening to me, my face was on the news and it was just insane. My parents totally freaked out, and I just didn’t know what to say to Alex. And I didn’t know what she would say to me. I think part of me just wanted to shut the whole thing out, shut her out.’

Oli holds his gaze until his eyes pull away. ‘Did it work?’

‘No, not really. I don’t sleep very well.’ She nods sympathetically, and he sighs. ‘Something like that happens, and you just start questioning everything. I lost all faith in my ability to judge people. Looking back, I’m not sure I really knew Alex at all.’

‘But you feel like you owe something to her now?’ Oli asks.

Regret ripples across his face, and he nods slightly. ‘Sort of.’

‘Tell us about your conversation last week,’ Oli says.

‘Alex said she wanted to go public with new information, but that she wanted to talk to me first. We were going to meet up today.’ He fumbles with the sugar. Messages and emails cause his phone to vibrate across the table; he picks it up and frowns before placing it firmly facedown.

‘But why now?’ Oli wonders. ‘Why would Alex come to you now?’

‘She said she’d started to remember what really happened that night, and she wanted to talk.’ He takes a sip of his tea and wipes his mouth. ‘She said she was going on the record with your paper so that the cops couldn’t shut her down.’ Miles looks across at Cooper. ‘She said she spoke to you and that she was going to record an interview. I think she liked the idea of speaking for herself, being able to say it in her own words and not having it get twisted in print. But she never would have gone on TV, she was too shy for something like that.’ His gaze is still on Cooper. ‘I think she trusted you. That’s why I called. After what happened to her, I figure it’s probably what she would have wanted.’