Tiff gave an exasperated huff, then waved her hand to acknowledge she was aware she was talking double Dutch as far as Louisa was concerned. ‘My point is, there were only about a dozen of the people I’d listed that I could say with some certainty actually turned up. I duplicated the list for you,’ Tiff said as she reached into her bag, then leant forward to hand a piece of paper to Louisa. ‘You check it, see if you can remember any different ones to me. We need to give as full a picture as we can, try and help Oliver out. Find his wife. The longer this goes on, the more tragic the outcome’s likely to be.’

Louisa almost laughed at Tiff’s concern as she stared at the folded paper. Of course this kind of drama was right up her street, and having a part to play, however small, was going to give her a buzz. But her sympathy for Oliver bothered Louisa a bit. She’d only met the man once and she was acting like she knew him. After a long, hard day, which had been topped off with her best friend going behind her back with Brian, again, and now being presented with The List – Louisa just wanted Tiff gone.

As if Noah heard her silent wish, he gave a high-pitched squeal and began thrashing his legs.

‘I’d best feed him.’ She moved to pick him up, but opened the lounge door first. Tiff got the message and after trying to give a brief explanation of what the police had said as she was being steered out the door, left. For a few minutes after she’d gone, Louisa stood motionless in the hallway, her brain grappling to make sense of the last hour. She’d warm a bottle for Noah, then look at the list after she’d fed him.

According to Tiff, she’d written down everyone she could think of – everyone from Louisa’s Facebook friends list she could remember. She said she hadn’t done the ‘invite all’ option because she didn’t want one hundred people turning up at the relatively small pub. But she had over-invited to take into account those who wouldn’t bother responding, those who were too far away, those who said no and those who were bound to be ‘last-minute failure-to-turn-ups’. Tiff had said that the police were going to go through it one by one. That much was obvious to Louisa. What wasn’t so obvious was whether Melissa had even been at her party.