‘Not sure,’ Miles says uncertainly. ‘I know all the girls liked him—they talked about him sometimes. It used to annoy me when Alex brought him up, but I think it was Nicole who was the closest to him. She was really into psychology, which is what he taught. But for whatever reason, Evelyn clearly didn’t want him there that night. Even Alex and Nicole seemed a bit freaked out by it.’ Miles pauses. ‘Like I said, the whole night had a weird vibe. Matt and Ren seemed really pissed about him being there too. I think they figured it meant we couldn’t, you know, do drugs in case he went to the cops.’ Miles laughs nervously. ‘It was shaping up to be a pretty shit party.’ ‘Did you get the feeling McCrae had been to the house before?’ Oli asks.

Miles’s eyes narrow in thought. ‘I don’t think so. Like I said, he seemed really awkward. It was as if he felt obliged to be there. I know there were a lot of rumours about him being a creep, but he didn’t seem sleazy. He was more like someone’s dad. He brought two bottles of fancy wine like he was trying to impress everyone.’

‘What did Alex say about him being there?’

‘We didn’t really talk about it. We kind of weren’t really talking by then.’

‘We’ll come back to that,’ Oli says quickly, not wanting him to lose momentum. ‘What happened after dinner?’

‘Everyone went out into the yard. Or, I think they did. Maybe Tan and Roy were still inside—Nic as well? I’m not sure, I was pretty drunk already. But that’s definitely when the fight broke out between Alex and Evelyn.’

Oli knows all this from the trial and is itching for him to give her something new. ‘But you always said you didn’t know what they were fighting about,’ she says. ‘Is that true?’

‘I have no idea!’ He sounds defensive. ‘They’d been at each other for weeks. Lots of sniping and moody silences. This seemed like more of the same, but because they were both drunk it was pretty heated.’

‘Any chance they were fighting over you?’

‘No, no way. But Alex was really scatty, going off at me over every little thing. Every time I asked her what was wrong, she shut down.’ Emotion flickers across Miles’ face. ‘It was really frustrating. I was pretty close to breaking up with her. She’d turned into a different person—they all had. They were so secretive and aloof.’

‘So the two girls were fighting outside,’ Oli says, coaxing him back to the facts.

‘Yeah. They were down in the corner of the yard yelling at each other, calling each other selfish. They were being pretty nasty.’

‘Nicole wasn’t there?’