Louisa tried to breath through her panic. Going with Oliver to an appeal was the absolute last thing she was comfortable doing. She reread the message, its begging tone even more pronounced the second time. This neediness wasn’t something she remembered from her time with Oliver; however, his tendency to exaggerate things was. It had always been a tactic of his to get her to do what he wanted. Maybe the ‘I need you’ part of the message was one such over-exaggeration. He didn’t need her with him. He just wanted her there, for whatever reason.

‘You okay? You’ve gone really pale.’

‘It’s Oliver,’ she said. ‘He wants me to go with him to make an appeal. I don’t see how I can help.’

‘Perhaps he wants moral support. It must be terrible going through something like that when you’re away from your family.’

‘How do you know where his family is?’ Louisa’s brow furrowed. As far as she remembered, Oliver’s family lived locally.

‘He told me. At the party. Said he’d left his family behind in York to come to Devon for a while to head up a new project to grow the business – and of course, then we got onto the conversation of all the old haunts we’d both frequented in York. I’m surprised I didn’t ever bump into him, given that at one point we’d have been in the same area at the same time.’

The thought that they might’ve met years ago was a strange one, but she didn’t dwell on that. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise they’d all moved there. I assumed it was just him, when he left for uni,’ she said. It was still surprising to Louisa that her ex-boyfriend and husband had chatted so openly the first time they’d ever met. ‘Did he also tell you how long he intends to stay here?’

Brian shrugged. It appeared that was all Louisa was going to glean for now.

‘Are you going to go with him?’ Brian asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to, if I’m honest.’ Louisa stared down at her phone screen, a fluttering of nerves beginning to swirl inside her.

‘I think you should.’

‘Really?’ Louisa’s head snapped up with the shock of hearing Brian’s statement. ‘Why?’

‘It would look bad if you didn’t.’

‘How on earth do you come to that conclusion?’

‘It was your party, Lou. And it’s the last place she was seen. If you don’t show any interest in helping find her, won’t the police question why?’

‘No! Why would they? Christ, Brian, I’m just the person whose party it was – I didn’t even invite her. And neither did Tiff, by the way. Oliver just showed up with her. Not that anyone even bloody saw her …’