Meredith wiped her free hand across her sweaty forehead. She wasn’t sure what to say – she didn’t want to freak her out any more than she already was. ‘Oh Paula,’ she began carefully. She’d been going to say something like, we have to tell the police everything, no matter how inconsequential it seems, but then realised how massively hypocritical that would be.

A robin hopped along the crazy-paving path, stopping with its head on one side to regard her. They stared at each other for a long while. Meredith couldn’t shake the sensation that it was judging her.

‘Look,’ she continued to Paula, and the robin. ‘I’m sorry if you thought I was interfering, but I’m worried. It’s not just the lion. You said the door was left open. I really don’t want to freak you out, and I’m not saying there’s any connection to any of it, but with … what happened to Ralph and Andrea, unless the post-mortems show that they both died accidentally, I just think we can’t be too careful.’

She tailed off, rubbing a burgeoning blister on her thumb made by the spade’s handle. She had decided not to burden Paula with all the other weird stuff that had been going on with her. And neither Paula nor Ralph ever knew the truth about who she used to be, nor how she really got the scar on her hand.

‘DS Davis is coming over to see me today,’ Paula said. ‘It might be with the results of the post-mortem. I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me on the phone. Which means it’s not good news.’

It was as if she was refusing to accept Meredith’s fears that someone might be targeting them.

‘That Gemma woman, the detective, is coming over to see me as well,’ said Meredith.

‘Why would she do that?’ Paula sounded almost outraged. ‘Why would they need to tell you?’

Meredith immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned it. ‘Because I knew both Ralph and Andrea, I suppose.’

‘I’m going to go to Norfolk to stay with my sister for a bit,’ Paula said. ‘Jackson’s going away with his girlfriend for a couple of weeks, some last-minute package holiday. We can’t have a funeral till the police release Ralph’s body anyway. DS Davis said it was OK as long as he knows where we are. I’ve cancelled all my clients indefinitely.’