Before I know it, two hours have passed and Peyton comes crashing into the room.

‘Phew!’ she says, falling on to her bed. She takes a loud, gurgling slurp from an iced coffee. ‘Ah. Hello, sport.’

I nonchalantly but quickly shut my things and shelve them away. ‘Hey. Everything go OK?’

‘Just as mind-numbing as I remember. Cleaned. Cleaned. Goofed off with Ellis. Arranged some flowers. Pulled some weeds. And, oh yeah, cleaned. How was ol’ Mary Anne?’

‘Definitely kind of intense.’

‘A rock and a hard place, come to battle it out.’

‘Which is which?’

Peyton looks me up and down. ‘Hard place.’

I think of my notes. I’m tempted to ask about Ellis – I don’t want her to suspect anything necessarily, but in the way that I don’t want anyone to suspect anything, and Peyton, I’ve decided, isn’t just anyone. My gut says she’s harmless and potentially knowledgeable, which at this moment is a winning combination.

‘Hey, so, remember what you told me about Ellis’s grandma?’ I ask. ‘How she went missing?’

‘Yeah, followed by you vanishing into the night like a weird and moody bat? How could I forget?’

‘Do you know why Ellis would be looking into her disappearance?’

She recoils in a way I find exciting. Mystery afoot. ‘What – what does that even mean? Is he?’

‘Apparently he put a request in with the police chief for a copy of her case file.’

‘Really? Ellis, he’s not the sort to – yeesh. No, I don’t know why he’d do that. Oh, poor kid, he’s probably now all obsessed with his real grandma or something, I bet. How do you even know Ellis was looking into it?’

‘Well, I was kinda curious about Roxy after I’d spoken to you, and I wanted to look at the report myself, but Booker wouldn’t let me have it. He mentioned though that someone else had asked for it recently. I put two and two together and assumed it was Ellis.’

‘Huh,’ she says. ‘Weird. Weird that he did that. Just – don’t bother him about it, I guess. I don’t think he really likes to talk about that stuff. He’s processing a lot.’

I want to tell her that maybe she doesn’t know him quite as well as she thinks she does.

Peyton falls back on to her bed, which sends the straps of her tank top splaying outwards, and I notice her tan lines, the thin strips of parallel pale skin tracing the curve of her shoulders. I think about touching them. ‘Right.’

Then my phone buzzes beside me on the desk.

Dad.

It rings three times, no part of me wanting to react to the situation at hand, before Peyton says, ‘Uh, you gonna get that?’

I hadn’t wanted to answer, knowing Peyton would hear everything – but I’m feeling especially nihilistic for whatever reason. This might as well happen. ‘Hi.’