She left Rusty at Cara’s house with Bowman, barely saying goodbye. Shame at her earlier confession has crept in, paired with guilt at dragging him into her mess. He makes her feel safe, but he can’t be her saviour. She feels caught between the past and the future. The perfect life with Dean that she had been sailing toward now seems completely out of reach. Maybe it always was.

Her encounter with Theo Bouris plays over in her mind. Someone must have tipped him off about Isabelle, cut him a deal to hunt her down. He wouldn’t have needed much convincing—he was on parole, hours from being hauled in for a spate of fresh crimes, and he surely revelled in the idea of going down in flames. Killing Isabelle was his grand finale, and an act that quite possibly secured him some kind of financial future for his wife and kids while he was in gaol.

Oli’s thoughts go to Dean again, her emotions running in opposite directions. She wants to be with him, back when it was just the two of them lost in their bubble. Not with the Dean who has appeared these past few days, the one she can’t trust. The one she worries has done something truly evil.

On a whim, she turns on the sound system and moves to Cooper’s chair. She puts on the headphones and speaks into the mic, her deep voice extra gritty from the lack of sleep. She provides some background on Isabelle, then on Bouris, explaining how they came to meet, before detailing Isabelle’s final moments. Oli pauses before switching to the present. She lays out the questions that have plagued her during the past few days, then describes her visit to the prison. Blood thrumming, she ends with an appeal for information before pressing stop. She pushes the equipment to the side and rests her arms on the table, tips her head forward and sleeps.

Oli wakes with a jolt. No concept of time. Checks her phone: almost 6 am. Ignoring a voicemail from Kay, she finds some gum in her bag and brushes her hair. She feels supercharged, as if she’s drunk a dozen coffees. She plugs the recorder into her laptop, downloads the file she recorded about Isabelle’s murder and attaches it to an email for Dawn, typing Idea for a new podcast episode into the subject line. Next she reads over the piece she wrote about Nicole and Evie, the babysitting link, and the possibility that Evie is Louise. The words are unfamiliar, as if written by a ghost. She sends it off to Kay and copies Dawn, explaining that Bowman agreed to revert to her by 9 am.