Inside is a simple platinum ring, the diamond in its centre sparkling in the overhead light. It isn’t big or flashy – a single stone – but the light catches the edge of the diamond and it shines. She pulls it out, turning it over in her palm, her brain struggling to catch up.

Then she starts to shake.

Finn bought this. He’d chosen a ring. An engagement ring.

On their trip to Rome, he’d been intending to propose.

The weight of how this week should have turned out presses down on her chest; Sophie feels like she can’t breathe. She imagines them excitedly sitting on the Spanish Steps, watching the sun go down, planning their wedding. The rest of their lives together.

She misses his hand in hers. His dark, kind eyes watching her intently behind his glasses, stylish by luck rather than choice. A man who has no idea how funny he is, who gives a small self-conscious smile whenever she laughs.

She wants to go to bed tonight with his long limbs wrapped round her, the feel of his slow breathing against the back of her neck.

Instead, Finn is in hospital. Ill. Confused. And the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

Sophie slowly replaces the ring in the box and shuts the lid. She tries to pull herself together. He needs you, she tells herself sternly. And she needs him. Back here, with her. And what Sophie wants, Sophie gets.

But the pep talk isn’t working. The worry for Finn, the guilt that she hadn’t known about his awful flat, takes over. Her body crumples and she puts her face in her hands.

Alone, in the darkness, in her empty home, she starts to cry.

13

The pub is noisy, filling up with jostling punters now it’s past half nine, windows already steamed with condensation. Freya sees Robin’s name flash up on her phone, but she doesn’t answer it. She glances to the bar. Josh is standing there, waiting to be served. The background music, multiple conversing voices – everything is loud. There’s no way she could hear a call from Robin in this.

‘Here you go,’ Josh says, putting the glass of wine in front of her. ‘Cheers.’

He holds out his pint and she clinks her glass against it.

‘How was your first day in charge?’ she asks him. Josh suggested a drink at the end of the long day and, desperate not to return to her lonely house, she found herself saying yes even before Mina agreed. But then Mina turned down the offer, and now Freya finds herself alone at the pub with her latest skipper.

Josh laughs. ‘Excruciating. Was I a nightmare?’