It was Harlan. She could feel her smile of welcome freezing into a scowl of dislike at the sight of him. She hadn’t been having a fabulous time before, but now her day took a distinct turn for the worse. Harlan fucking Stone. And he had his two attack dogs on either side of him, that musclebound fool who was mucking Milly about, Nipper, and his usual sidekick, Ludo.

They peeled off and crossed the road, weaving through traffic to reach the other side, leaving Harlan alone with her. ‘You got a lift home?’ he asked her.

Belle hadn’t. She’d been planning to grab a taxi when she’d had enough. Right now, she knew she’d had enough already. Her misery over Beezer’s death, her dread of his upcoming funeral, had ruined any enjoyment she might have felt today. The shopping trip had been a mistake. She shook her head.

‘Come on, car’s over here.’

She didn’t even have the strength left to argue. He took her arm and guided her over the road. His Porsche was parked there. He opened the passenger door for her and she got in. Then he slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

‘So what’s up?’ he asked, swerving out into the traffic. Someone honked their horn and he flipped the finger at them. ‘You look shattered.’

‘Nothing,’ said Belle. ‘Well. Beezer. I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.’

‘Ah yeah.’ He drove with one hand on the wheel, relaxed, casual. ‘Sad, that.’

‘You were there when he did it. Weren’t you.’

‘Yeah. It was damned tragic.’

Harlan had twisted his face into a semblance of grief, but Belle wasn’t convinced. She knew there’d always been aggro between Harlan and Beezer. They’d never got on. And she couldn’t forget what Milly had told her, about Beezer spotting Harlan as a small boy going into poor doomed baby Jake’s nursery in the middle of the night. But then – Harlan didn’t know that Beezer had seen him, did he? Because if he had known, then if you were of a suspicious nature you might start thinking that Harlan could have given Beezer a little shove in the right direction, right over that balustrade and down onto the pavement, bashing his brains out – and silencing him in the process.

‘Couldn’t you have stopped him? Talked him out of it?’ she asked, watching his face.

Harlan shrugged.

‘How the hell could I? He did it before I even suspected he was about to. One minute he was there, saying how everything in his life was rubbish, then he was gone.’ Harlan cast a grey-eyed glance at Belle. ‘He wanted to do it, and nobody was going to stop him. As I said to Dad, all we can do is give him a good send-off and leave it at that.’

‘That’s pretty cold,’ said Belle.