Janie:I don’t know what else I can tell you. Please. My girls – I need to be with them.

Marlow:Your daughters are both being cared for. Like I say, if you’re thinking of them, you need to begin telling me the whole story.

Janie:I have told you.

Marlow:I don’t think you have, Janie. (sighs) Right now, all I can think is that if Miles Morgan hadn’t appeared back in your life on Monday, none of us would be sitting here. (pauses) Tell me what happened when you saw him in your husband’s office. You went out for lunch with him, is that right?

Janie:(shakes head) No. I didn’t go. I stupidly found myself walking to the quay with Miles and Harry, but stopped before I actually had lunch. I made my excuses, said I really needed to take Ella’s sports bag to school – which was what I’d gone there for in the first place.

Marlow:How did you feel, seeing him again after such a long time?

Janie:I felt so … wrong-footed again. It was everything – his gait, the way he strode across the office like he owned it. I wanted to run at him and punch him in the face. I didn’t, though, of course. It’s been five years. If I really wanted to hurt him, I would have done it back then. I wouldn’t have burned my husband’s office to the ground.

Marlow:You were angry with your husband for working with Miles Morgan, though.

Janie:Yes. Of course I was. Because Harry knew. He knew what Miles had done to Sophie. He knew how guilty I had felt afterwards, and yet he was still mates with him. He prioritised someone who was good for business over me and my best friend.

Marlow:Tell me what happened with Sophie.

Janie:(pauses)

Marlow:Janie?

Janie:We’ve been best friends since we were eleven. We sat next to each other on the first day of secondary school and became inseparable. After A levels our lives took very different paths, though. I studied law, Sophie started working for an estate agent. She gave that up when she began waitressing in high-end clubs because the money was better. I mean, our lives were unrecognisable to each other at one point. I was married to a successful advertising exec, two daughters in private education, and Sophie was living in a flat with a part-time boyfriend. But she was still my closest friend.

Marlow:And one of these high-end clubs was where your husband and Miles Morgan used to drink?