OLI DRIVES AROUND THE METICULOUSLY MANICURED BOULEVARDS of Brighton Cemetery for almost twenty minutes, craning her neck to read the custom street signs: Breeze Lane, Ocean Road, but no Saltwater Drive. Giving up, she parks outside a building with Information written across the wall. She really should just leave, but the ferocious urge to be here has been gnawing at her ever since the idea speared into her consciousness while she sat with Cooper in Chili Town yesterday.

Noel & Young Lawyers specialise in divorce. Oli knows this because Lily has frequently raged about how much money Shaun has paid them to settle things with Rebecca. Lying awake in the early hours, Oli conjured up reasons for Isabelle to have an appointment there—reasons that weren’t related to ending her marriage. A case she was working on? Or was she going to support a friend? But none of those possibilities seemed right. Oli had known the truth the moment she saw those words: just before she died, Isabelle was planning to divorce Dean or vice versa.

It’s hot inside the building, stale air buzzing noisily from a vent in the ceiling. Oli approaches the information desk and gives Isabelle’s name to a kid in a suit who has a bleeding pimple on his chin. With an orange highlighter he draws a few lines on an A4 map and hands it to her without uttering a word.

A little further along there’s a cafe packed full of people—most of whom, Oli notes absently, aren’t wearing black. She glances outside at the drizzle and decides to order a coffee. More caffeine, just what I need, she thinks wryly, smiling at an older lady who is sitting by herself and eating a large cupcake topped with pink icing.

Back in the car, Oli holds the map in one hand. Left, right, right, left until she arrives at the base of a green hill dotted with graves. Double-checks the map. This is it, with the impossibly perfect lawns and the relentless chirping of birds. She plods up the knoll, clutching her oat slice and coffee, half expecting to find that there’s been some mistake, that Isabelle is not here after all, that she never was. But then Oli sees it, the bed of quartz under a giant weeping willow.

ISABELLE ANNE YARDLEY

1970—2011

Beloved wife, mother and daughter.

No mention of her being a detective. At the head of the slab there’s a posy of blue flowers and a huge bouquet of dying tulips, identical to the ones Dean often buys for Oli.

She looks around. The girls said Mary comes here every Sunday at lunchtime. It’s midday.

Light-headed, Oli takes a seat on a nearby bench, eats and waits. As she stares at Isabelle’s grave, memories roll through her mind of the day Dean’s wife died, how confusing it was. She swallows a sob, trying to quell unexpected emotion.