She looked up at the sound of the door opening. Emily Marlow walked in, her face pinched, her eyebrows knitted tightly together. She didn’t take her gaze away from Janie as she strode purposefully to her chair. Even when she slid onto it, she didn’t once look away.

Janie shuffled on the plastic seat. She wanted to turn away from Marlow’s gaze, but it was quickly apparent that something had happened. Emily Marlow was clearly walking back into the room with knowledge she didn’t have earlier, and Janie had a feeling the detective might know exactly what had happened on Monday night.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Monday 13 May – the night of the fire

Sirens continued to fill the air as the fire blazed behind them. ‘How do you know Miles Morgan?’ Laura was asking. ‘You said his name when you asked if Harry was in there alone, like you expected him to be there.’

Mia’s eyes danced as she turned to Janie. She had a gut full of gin, and the headiness of the night was overwhelming. ‘Six years ago he raped my sister,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the woman she had come for. She waited for a reaction.

Janie blinked, momentarily confused, before closing her eyes and shaking her head with the sinking realisation. ‘Oh God, no.’

‘You set him free. You stood in the courtroom,’ Mia went on, taking a step closer to Janie, ‘and told the jury – and everyone sitting in it – that my sister was “asking for it”, because she was the type of girl to sleep with someone different every week. Only you knew that wasn’t really the case, didn’t you?’ She pressed forward until her face was only inches from Janie’s. ‘You knew what he had done.’

‘I was doing my job.’ Janie’s words were uttered in a whisper. Tears rolled down her face. When they reached her lips, she dragged them away with her thumb. She searched Mia for signs of recognition, because the woman must have been in the courtroom, watching it all play out. There was a glimmer of something in the high cheekbones, the deep-brown eyes, but her hair was longer then. That was it, Janie thought: she’d had highlighted hair that came down to her waist; and after the case Janie hadn’t given her a thought, because she was only a face in the crowd.

‘Did you believe him?’ Mia was asking. ‘Did you actually believe his lies or did you know, deep down, what my sister had gone through?’

‘I was defending him,’ Janie went on. ‘I had to—’

‘Do your job; yes, I know, but did you believe him?’