There was barely a surface that wasn’t crowded out. She had been sent so many flowers she could have opened a shop – or perhaps a funeral parlour – including a huge bunch of roses that had been shoved into a single vase and were struggling to survive. Most of her good luck cards were expensive: handmade rather than mass-market. I’d already noticed Sky’s Gucci umbrella and Cartier watch. The luxury brand names continued with crystal flasks of perfume, hand cream in porcelain tubs, Fortnum & Mason biscuits and loose-leaf tea in fancy tins, liqueur chocolates, soap and scent diffusers, those weird stick things that poke out of a jar of oil, dispensing, to my mind, no scent at all. Three bottles of champagne and a bottle of gin had been lined up on one shelf and there were a dozen glasses that didn’t appear to have been washed.

None of this connected with what I knew of her. She had spent three years appearing as a barmaid in EastEnders, and during rehearsals she’d always spoken with an Estuary English accent, although dismissing us just now, she had been much more Cheltenham Ladies’ College. I thought I’d had a good understanding of everyone I’d met so far – Tirian, Jordan, Arthur and Olivia Throsby. But Sky was something else. A mystery within a mystery.

‘This is a fifteen-minute call for members of the Mindgame company. You have fifteen minutes to curtain up. Thank you.’

It was a disembodied voice that I presumed belonged to Pranav, the stage manager. It came over the intercom system and for the first time I noticed the speaker set high up in a corner of the room. Sky heard it. ‘I’ve gotta go! Bye!’ She disconnected the telephone and set it down, then turned to us. ‘I’m really sorry. I have to get ready.’

‘Come on, darling. I’ve seen the play. You’re not on for the first fifteen pages.’ When Hawthorne was annoyed, he often slipped into language that I would not have used myself. Perhaps he did it deliberately, to show he didn’t care. ‘We need to ask you a few questions about Harriet Throsby,’ he added.

‘I told you. I’ve got nothing to say. I hardly knew her.’

‘Did you know where she lived?’

‘Why are you even asking me that? Are you accusing me of something? Yes, I knew where she lived. We all did.’ She looked directly at me. ‘You showed me that article in the magazine.’

‘What?’

Once again, I felt the ground opening up beneath my feet. How many more ways could I be found guilty of this crime?

‘House & Garden. You showed it to me during the first week of rehearsals. There was a picture of her house. The article said she lived next to the canal … near a tunnel.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’ I exclaimed. ‘I never saw the magazine. I didn’t know her address …’

‘Are you calling me a liar?’