It was almost midnight by the time Clodagh was allowed to leave the police station. The hours since finding Tara’s body had passed in a blur of shock and fear and activity. Tara’s neighbour had called the police. Two uniformed police officers had turned up, firing a barrage of questions at Clodagh. At some point, they’d bundled her into the back of their car and driving her to Charing Cross police station. She’d spent the next few hours sitting across a table from two police detectives, answering the same questions again and again. Finally, when she was on the verge of breaking down and begging them to stop, they’d told her she was free to go for now.

Clodagh stood on the quiet street, breathing in deep mouthfuls of dank city air, trying to work out what she was meant to do now. It was too late to take a train back home. Even if the trains were still running, which she doubted, she didn’t think she had the energy to do that journey tonight. And she didn’t want to be alone.

She took her phone out to call Adam, but when she tried to switch it on nothing happened. The battery had died. Her own fault, as usual. She couldn’t remember when she’d last charged the damn thing. Luckily, she knew Adam was staying in Soho House, so she decided that’s where she’d go now.

She walked to Charing Cross train station and climbed gratefully into one of the black cabs waiting outside.

‘Soho House,’ she said.

‘Which one, love?’

The question flummoxed her. She hadn’t realised there was more than one Soho House in London.

‘Shoreditch or Dean Street?’ the driver said, when Clodagh didn’t answer.

‘Dean Street,’ she said, vaguely remembering Adam giving the address to someone over the phone a while back.

Midway through the journey, the taxi driver asked Clodagh if she was someone famous.

‘I get a lot of celebrities in my cab,’ he said. ‘Usually, I spot them easily. But not you. I recognise your face, but I can’t work out where I’ve seen you. You’re Irish, right? My old man’s from a place called Clonmel. You ever heard of it?’

Clodagh told him she’d heard of Clonmel but had never been there. Despite insisting she wasn’t a celebrity, the driver spent the rest of the journey trying to work out where he’d seen her before. By the time she’d paid him and said goodbye, she was relieved to see the back of him.

At Soho House, she gave her name to the doorman and asked if he’d pass a message to Adam Murray. She’d expected to be waiting for a while, but within five minutes, she saw Adam coming out of the lift and hurrying towards her across the lobby.