She’d had a text the night before from someone she used to work with. Katie Burton. Telling her that she’d been contacted by someone asking questions about her previous employment with them. Katie wanted to know if everything was all right.

It didn’t take a genius to guess it must have been Laura who’d been in touch. If she carried on running around like some sort of amateur Nancy Drew, then everything Mia had worked towards could be taken away in an instant.

Mia exhaled a tight breath and turned her attention back to Harry. She had to be careful. She also wondered if Harry actually knew that she’d met his wife for lunch, because despite Janie alluding to the fact that she had set it up of her own accord, surely Harry had sent her?

‘I hope you do the right thing,’ Janie had said and even though her tone hadn’t been menacing, it must have been intended as a threat.

And now Mia didn’t know whether she was getting out of her depth, and if she should she walk away before things went too far. But what would that achieve? She had never been someone who gave up easily.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

One week before the fire

Laura hesitated before closing down her PC and throwing her mobile in her bag. The clock had only just ticked past five. A stack of unread emails and an incomplete document left her with butterflies fluttering in her stomach, but when there had been little more than a minimal exchange of words with Nate and some hastily devoured dinners, something had to give. The only thing that was keeping her from leaving now was the fact that she had finally called Tess Wills that day, and now that she had, Laura’s need to speak to her was verging on obsessive. Six hours later and she was still waiting for the woman to call her back.

Finally she gave up and left the office. Nate was in the garden when she arrived home. He was carting Bobby along on his hip as he walked alongside the thin border of plants that ran beside the fence. Every so often he would stop and point at a bush or a flower and whisper words in their son’s ear that Laura couldn’t hear.

She stood by the kitchen window, holding up her hand and pressing her palm against the pane as she watched her precious family. The way Bobby nestled into the crook of Nate’s body, like he was attached there. She couldn’t make out where one person stopped and the other started, and the sight of them both melted her heart and stabbed it at the same time. How she loved them – more than anything. But how she felt she was losing them too.