‘I’ve no idea,’ April said before her face creased up. ‘Jason always looked after it.’

‘Never mind,’ Faith said, searching around the foot well until her fingers made contact with the lever. The clunk of the bonnet releasing was felt rather than heard above the deafening noise of the rain and the horn. Faith pulled up her hood again and jumped out of the car.

Lifting the bonnet and using her phone as a torch, Faith searched until she found what she thought was the connector to the horn. Needing two hands to disconnect it, she gave up holding her hood over her head and seconds later the wailing stopped.

‘You’ll have to take it to a garage and get it fixed properly,’ Faith said, peeling away the locks of damp hair sticking to her face when she returned to April. She was soaked through and her lambskin gloves were covered in dirt and grease.

‘Are they ruined?’ asked April.

Faith rolled the gloves inside each other before the grease could get anywhere else. They were a recent acquisition from a little trip she had made to a selection of charity shops along the Cheshire belt. She had been on the hunt for designer castoffs from soap stars and WAGs at a fraction of the original price. It was where she had found her outfit for the Christmas party.

‘At least I haven’t damaged my manicure,’ she said as she inspected her wet and wrinkled fingers. She had spent the last few days having every part of her body pampered and preened. It could all be for nothing if she spent the evening with April.

‘Sorry.’

Faith twisted in her seat so they were facing each other. Her friend’s face was ashen and whatever make-up she had been wearing had left her red eyes muddy. The tears, however, had dried. ‘Right then, tell me about this Bree.’

April nodded and took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ she said, although it took her some time to corral the emotions that had stolen her voice earlier. ‘She worked with Jason, but we were friends too.’

‘Or you thought you were.’

‘Jason met her while I was away at uni,’ she said. ‘I was a bit jealous at the time but Jason treated her as he would any mate, and I’ve always thought that if something was going to happen, it would have happened then. And once Bree met Callum and they got married, I stopped seeing her as a threat. Jason and Callum became best mates, for God’s sake.’

‘And how did Bree react when Jason died?’