Oli sighs. She wants something else—not the same old story from a slightly different angle. ‘What were the girls doing when you left the house?’

Ren thinks for a moment. ‘I reckon Evelyn was in the lounge room. The other girls were in one of the bedrooms.’ He looks up and squares his shoulders. ‘I saw them down on the corner after that, though.’

Oli’s fingers tighten around the pen she’s holding. ‘You saw Alex and Nicole after you left the house?’

Ren nods. ‘Yeah. They were walking down toward the foreshore.’

‘When you were at the shops?’ Oli asks.

‘Yeah. I didn’t say anything to Miles, ’cause he was already upset about her. I didn’t think they should talk for a bit.’

Oli’s nerves are firing. ‘Were Nicole and Alex talking? Arguing?’

Ren scrunches up his face. ‘I dunno. They were just walking together. Alex was wearing a backpack, so I thought maybe they were going to the twenty-four-hour bottle shop.’

Oli knows that the cops asked shopkeepers to come forward if they saw the girls that night, but no one did. Neither of them had used their bank cards, and all of Nicole’s things were at the house. With so little CCTV back then, the defence could never prove whether or not the walk Alex insisted had happened actually took place.

‘You didn’t mention this at the trial, Ren. Why not?’

He shrugs. ‘I can’t really remember what I said back then. I probably did mention it.’

She knows he didn’t but lets it slide. She’s trying to think what it all means. Did Alex and Nicole kill Evelyn together? And if so, why did Alex draw the short straw? ‘A lot of people said the girls were fighting before Evelyn was killed. Did you notice that?’

‘I saw them argue a lot, yeah. Like when Evelyn put the paint all over Alex’s car.’ Ren is clearly impressed at this memory. ‘That was pretty weird.’

Oli blinks. ‘Do you know why she did that?’

‘No. They were yelling—me and Matt were pissing ourselves listening to it, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. We went onto the balcony for a smoke, and we could see Evelyn painting a canvas in the carport. She was into art, always making something, paintings and sketches, that kind of thing. I think the others were inside, and Evelyn, she just suddenly put down her brush and threw a tin of paint all over Alex’s car.’

‘What did Alex do?’

Ren squeezes his eyes shut for moment. ‘She just stood there staring at it. The paint was white, so it looked like bird shit on the red. After a second, she just, like, stomped back into the house. Alex washed it off, it wasn’t permanent or anything.’

‘Were they always fighting like that?’