A recent photo of Rob sitting at the harbour café catches her eye. She remembers when she took it. He was grinning at someone using the ‘perv-oculars’ to scan the suntanned bodies on the beach below. She looks more closely at the picture, grateful to be able to study Rob’s handsome face without feeling strange. And then she notices someone in the background, standing in the coffee queue. It’s the same man who sat next to her yesterday, before her swim. And he’s staring at the camera. At her.

The front doorbell rings.

30

Silas

‘Hello, stranger,’ Silas says, holding out the bunch of carnations. It’s good to see Kate again.

‘You bastard,’ Kate manages to say, visibly shocked as she takes the flowers.

Silas should have warned her. He tenses his foot, ready to insert it into the doorway in case she slams the door in their faces. She looks well though: healthy, barely recognisable from the woman he last saw in hospital, bandaged and full of tubes. Her long brown hair’s up, shaved at the nape. Edgy, stylish. She must have struggled to conform when she was working for the police.

‘It’s OK, we’re not here to ask you back,’ he says, palms held up in front of him. ‘We just want to show you one picture, that’s all.’

‘A long way to come for one picture,’ Kate says, still holding her ground on the doorstep.

‘One picture’s often all it takes – as you know.’

‘Has this got anything to do with the court case?’ Kate asks.

‘Can we come in?’ Silas peers past Kate into the airy hall, which looks bigger than his entire flat in Old Swindon. ‘Please?’

‘Don’t give up the day job,’ Kate says to Strover. She looks dismissively at the carnations and turns to walk into the house, leaving the door barely open behind her.

Strover raises her eyebrows at Silas as they follow Kate in. They’ve had warmer welcomes.

‘Sorry about the phone calls,’ Strover says, but Kate ignores her.

‘You look well,’ Silas says, keen to change the subject. ‘Really well.’

They walk through the hall, past large modern artworks on the walls, and into the kitchen, where Silas sits down in the sunshine. He wants to settle the mood as soon as possible, dissipate her understandable anger with familiar banter. The three of them used to be close colleagues. A good team. The accident ended all that. He knows she still blames him, the police, for causing her to fall asleep at the wheel, for working her too hard.

‘I’m getting there,’ Kate says, dropping the carnations in the sink and running some water.