Closing her eyes, she could see him as she’d walked into the room, his eyes shining with delight. They’d even joked about her wearing knickers. Her face flushed with embarrassment.

But remembering the way he’d looked at her made her stop and think.

Malcolm obviously didn’t believe the charges they’d brought against Greg. Kath wouldn’t either. They’d known him all his life. They’d known Ailsa too.

She doubted Caroline would believe it either and she had been his lover when Ailsa had gone missing.

So what had the police found that had led them to Greg? What evidence did they have to suggest he’d raped and murdered her?

It must have had something to do with the DNA samples they’d taken from all the males who’d been in Blackrig when Ailsa had gone missing, she realized. They must have found Greg’s DNA somewhere on her body.

But was that enough to convict him?

She stopped there, her brain seizing up at the horror of it all.

The question she really had to ask herself was . . . did she believe Greg capable of such a crime?

She dozed fitfully, her dreams full of an image of Ailsa in the fairy glen, pouting at the camera – but who was taking the photograph?

She still hadn’t got used to the early sunrise this far north. Greg didn’t have curtains at any of the windows in Beanach . . . ‘There’s no one here to look in,’ he used to say to her. ‘Except the darkness,’ had been her response.

‘The dark can’t hurt you,’ he’d told her. ‘Besides, we’ve just passed the longest day. It barely gets dark here at this time of year.’

It wasn’t the early light that woke her next morning but the unfamiliar ring of the landline. Groggy with sleep, she went to answer, thinking it might be Malcolm who’d said he would call Beanach if he heard any news.

He sounds broken, she thought, when Greg’s voice said her name.

‘Joanne,’ he repeated when she didn’t immediately respond. ‘Are you okay?’

She had no idea how to answer him. She couldn’t tell him how frightened she’d been last night. How she’d planned to leave here and as quickly as possible.

‘I’m okay. How are you?’ she managed.

He was silent and she knew he must have heard from her voice how she really felt.

‘What’s happening?’ she tried. ‘Will they let you come home?’ Home. That word again. His home, not hers.

‘Not yet. I’m being interviewed shortly. Not sure what will happen after that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, her voice almost a whisper.

‘I didn’t do what they’re accusing me of,’ he said, his voice steady.