Fighting the urge to roll her eyes again, Oli pulls up an aerial view of the property on Google Earth. Number 9 Laker Drive looks to be about half a hectare. A stream cuts across the rear-right corner, and there’s a small square of grass at the back of the house. But aside from that, the block is thick with trees.

‘That’s the house?’ Cooper peers over her shoulder.

She zooms in, peering at the rickety roof. ‘I guess so. It looks more like a cottage.’

‘Weird to think Nicole was hiding out here, huh? I wonder if she’s been here the whole time?’

‘I doubt it.’ Oli kicks the ground and loosens some stones from the dirt. ‘How many years was Alex in gaol for? Three, right?’

‘Just over. She got out in April 2009, and she was sentenced in January 2006. I still can’t believe you were at the house that morning,’ he says whimsically. ‘And now we’re here. That’s some full circle stuff, huh. I mean, there’s no way you would have thought you’d be covering the same case all over again a decade later.’

There’s no way Oli could have foreseen any part of her current life ten years ago. ‘I guess you just never know which stories have more to give.’

‘It’s actually just dawning on me how crazy it is that I have the interview lined up with Alex on Sunday. Everyone’s going to be gunning to talk to her now.’

‘No shit,’ Oli mutters, looking again from the image on the phone to the trees in front of her.

‘We might even be able to get advertisers in a bidding war to sponsor the first episode.’

‘The guy who found Nicole was jogging,’ Oli says, ignoring Cooper as she scans the borders of the property. ‘But I doubt he was jogging through this.’ She indicates the thick bracken surrounding them.

‘Maybe he was running on the road. Or up the driveway?’

Oli scrolls back over the map. ‘No,’ she says, straining her neck to look further up the road. ‘Come on.’

Cooper glances back at the crowd. ‘Everyone else seems to be staying over there.’

‘Exactly.’ She stomps through the long grass, hoping it’s too cold for snakes. As she follows the thin wire fence through the trees, she steps between tufts of native grass. An old memory settles over her. Dry grass scratching her plump legs as she scrambles to follow Lily and her father. They were bushwalking somewhere on their grandmother’s farm before she died.

‘Come on, girls, keep up!’

Lily bounds ahead, disappearing over a ridge. Oli is exhausted, her muscles aching, arms covered in welts. She sits on a rock. Adjusts her sock so her blister doesn’t rub against her sneaker. Pulls a biscuit out of her pocket and starts to eat it. She is always so hungry.