‘Is there anyone you can call?’ Ade asked. ‘It doesn’t sound as if you should be by yourself at the moment.’

‘You mean you’re not going to arrest me?’

‘We just want to understand what happened on Saturday night,’ Rachel said. ‘All of it, not just the bits you want us to know about.’

‘You mean the row.’ Tara sighed and the tension Rachel had noticed earlier seemed to leave her body as she slumped forward. ‘I didn’t tell you about it because I knew you’d think it was something it wasn’t.’

Rachel could have pointed out that Tara hadn’t had the same concerns when she’d told them about the argument between Nick and Adam. But she didn’t because she didn’t want to interrupt Tara now she was finally opening up to them.

‘He told me he’d cancelled our week away,’ she said. ‘When I asked him why, he said he couldn’t afford it. Which was a lie because he’s got, like, loads of money. I was so upset because that week away was, like, the only thing I had to look forward to. My mood’s been really low for a few weeks now. It gets like that around this time of the year. Nick knew that and he knew how important it was for me to get away. Yet he still cancelled. And he did it without even telling me first. Which meant he let me carry on looking forward to it, and talking with him about it, after he’d cancelled. He only told me about it on Saturday night because he was in a bad mood and he wanted to bring me down too.’

‘I can understand why you were upset about it,’ Ade said. ‘I’d be very angry if a fella I was dating pulled a stunt like that.’

‘You’re right,’ Tara said. ‘I was upset. And angry. But not enough to kill him. What can I tell you? Our relationship was fiery. We loved each other, but we drove each other mad as well. Yet no matter how many rows we had, we always made it up afterwards. And you’ll never know what I’d give to have had the chance to make up with him this time too.’

‘You had separate rooms at the villa,’ Rachel said. ‘Why was that?’

‘Nick refused to come at first. When he changed his mind, I made him book his own room. I wasn’t going to let him think he could just share with me. He had to prove to me that he really wanted to be there.’ She looked defiantly at Rachel and Ade. ‘You’ve got to make men work at a relationship. Otherwise they’ll walk all over you.’

They left soon after that, both of them convinced they’d got as much information as they could from Tara for now.