Liam on her mind, she typed his name into Google again, curious to know more about the man she had just spent the day with. She gave his Amazon biography another glance, this time taking a closer look at the books.

He had only written one other book in the true crime genre, which had been about the Steve Noakes murder spree, and it had been well-received, both critically and commercially, with reviewers praising his straightforward yet sensitive style of relaying the facts.

Hannah clicked onto a recent YouTube interview with him, trying to reconcile that the eloquent and passionate man talking on the screen was the same person whose dog had knocked her flying, who she had drunkenly berated on the phone, and who had been both a calm and reassuring presence when she had lost her shit earlier.

He had a face that worked well with the camera, all sharp planes and angles, the high cut of his cheekbones and the smooth line of his jaw, the lens picking up on the light blue of his eyes and the quick flash of lopsided grin that gave a crooked appeal to his almost perfect symmetry. Even the dishevelled mop on his head seemed less… messy; whatever lighting had been used picking out highlights of gold and caramel in his tawny brown hair.

Fascinated, she watched the interview, her ears pricking up when he mentioned the Eileen Wickham project, saying it was the one crime he had always wanted to write about. He didn’t expand on why, even though the interviewer did ask, instead leading the conversation in a different direction. Hannah had noticed he was good at doing that and he didn’t like to give away much about himself, even if he was in the public eye.

The interviewer then threw her completely by asking if it was true that Liam was planning on donating all royalties from the book to selected children’s charities. As he nodded and confirmed it was, guilt stabbed at Hannah.

She had thought the worst of him, assuming that he wanted to profit from their misery and had accused him of doing so.

Why hadn’t he corrected her?

The thought played on her mind into the evening. Unsettled, she tried to relax with a soak in the bathtub, but her mind wouldn’t switch off.

If she had given Liam the opportunity to tell her everything at the start, would she have had a different view about talking to him?

It was a difficult one, as she was still uncomfortable at the idea of the book, but knowing that while it was about Eileen, it wasn’t about validating her, and that the proceeds were going to charity, changed things.

Could it be cathartic? Time to finally put the past to rest, or at least reconcile it and move on?