‘Well, even if I never see you again, I’m not sure it’s safe for you here alone. You might get hassled by another creep.’ His tone was loaded, but he didn’t try anything on. He told her later that although he wanted to kiss her right there in the bar, he thought it was important that if anything happened between them it was on her terms.

‘Honestly, I’m fine.’ She smiled at him, and he smiled back, his eyes glued to her lips. ‘And surely you have to get back to your friends?’

‘Boring businessmen.’ He laughed. ‘From out of town. Believe me, I’d rather hang with you.’

He offered to buy her a drink before he returned to his table. She acquiesced and spent the next half an hour sipping the elaborate cocktail, her nerves on fire every time his gaze shifted her way.

The dodgy lawyers never showed up, and Oli left, even though she wanted to stay. Dean tipped his beer and winked at her as she weaved through the crowd to the exit. She smiled back and elbowed off unwanted attention until she was safely in a cab.

On the following two Fridays, she returned to the bar. She finally scored a lead on the lawyers, but Dean didn’t show again.

He appeared two months later, outside court, while she was jostling with her peers, shouting questions at the premier about infrastructure overspend. Dean, outrageously handsome in a suit, was standing with the communications team. His eyebrows shot into the air. ‘Sarah,’ he mouthed. She shrugged and winked, a move that was completely out of character, but he made her feel light. Playful. She sometimes wonders how things would have turned out if she had pretended not to recognise him, had turned down his offer of a drink later that evening.

‘I don’t do it as much as I used to,’ she muses to Cooper. ‘I guess it’s different these days—so much information is on social media.’

‘So where to now?’ he asks.

‘We need to find the kid. Dawn’s not keen to run with it until we can be sure.’

He swallows. ‘Do you think Evie could be at the house?’

‘I think it’s possible. Or Nicole might have taken her somewhere safe.’ Oli pauses, daring to say what they’re surely both thinking. ‘Or it could be a murder–suicide.’

‘Yeah, I figured that too.’ Cooper looks out the window, his jaw tensing again.

‘But,’ she reasons, ‘if they found another body at the house, I think Rusty would have told me. Assuming he knew.’

Cooper brightens. ‘So maybe Evie is with someone else. A friend or something.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe she’s with a neighbour?’

‘I hope so but realistically there’s every chance she’s dead too, so we should be prepared for that.’

‘That’s pretty negative,’ Cooper says prissily.