Tracey pushed her hair from her face. She was thin, her skin no longer luminous and smooth, now sallow and lined. Her front tooth was missing, words a breathy lisp. Her arms were pinned to her waist, the sweatshirt she was wearing stained down the front. Ketchup maybe.

“Why am I here?”

“It’s time for you to go.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s all over. The story is told. We are done.”

Tracey released her arms. Her hands were sunken into the sleeves of the sweatshirt.

“Who knows?”

“No one. And that’s how it will stay.” She handed Tracey the bicycle bell, now mangled and charred. “You can stop now. Enough.”

Tracey nodded once, then shuffled from the shop.

*

Helen closed the door on the police and exhaled. The last few months had been brutal, both physically and mentally, but she was ok. They were ok. She poured the remaining milk down the sink as she wiped away the tears that she had forced out – enough to make them believe her, but not so much that they were dubious.

Mills came into the kitchen. “So is that it? It’s over?”

Helen turned and held out her arms to her and Mills folded into them. “I think so,” Helen mumbled into her apple-scented hair.

Helen started to cough and turned away from Mills, her lungs burning.

“Ok?” Mills asked.

“Yeah, fine,” she replied with a wan smile.

They sat at the breakfast bar in the tiny flat above the bookshop. The streets below were quiet. No cheerful school activity; no rattling kegs being rolled into the pub; no rubbish trucks or car noise or clattering cups from the tea shop.

The town and the whole country had been in lockdown for the last few weeks because of the global pandemic and, if asked, Helen would say that it had come at just the right time.

It was only later that Helen learned how close she had come to losing Mills in the fire.

Hugh admitted to her that he had set the fire in the basement next to the cantankerous boiler, propping Peter’s body up unceremoniously next to it.

Mills had run down to the pool house to gather up the notebooks and photos, conscious that they were left lying out in the open and aware that Diana could be anywhere. When she returned, the house was alight. She recognised the opportunity for what it was and had rushed into the house with the tote bag. She had thrown it into the basement where the flames were building rapidly, licking up the stairs already. She had wanted to destroy all of it, but then found herself trapped, eventually backed into a corner of the lounge by the smoke and flames. It was only Hugh’s bravery that had saved her.

But it was Matt that had saved Helen.

There was a connection there after all.