I smile, make my excuses and go to the kitchen. I breathe out and suppress the urge either to scream or throw up. I pour myself a gin; I’m not driving today, not that that would stop me. I hear the door close a few minutes later and drink to another lost opportunity as the police walk towards their car.

Bracing myself yet again for a moment alone with R, I finish what’s in the glass and hear R on the phone to someone from the company, chastising them for something. At least it wasn’t me who disappointed him this time – I would hate to have to do my make-up again.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

There was a plethora of information on the rise of Corrigan Construction. Adrian had found article after article online about contract bids won by the company, including many of the bigger construction jobs in the county and beyond. Over the ten years they had been in the area, their profile had increased exponentially. The head office building Adrian and Imogen had visited had been constructed when the company moved into the area, bringing with them hundreds of job opportunities.

Adrian couldn’t stop thinking about the difference between the woman they had seen in that hospital bed and the polished Angela Corrigan with her Dynasty looks. They needed to speak to her alone, without being under the watchful eye of her husband. A husband who had never reported her missing, even though she was in the hospital for several days. Adrian could only imagine what kind of state she had been in when she turned up back at home.

There was something else bothering Adrian. Something that had just occurred to him. Adrian had been all over the news when he rescued Angela Corrigan from the river, so unless Reece had been living under a rock then he would have seen that footage. Granted, Angela looked nothing like the woman they had seen at Corrigan’s house, but at the same time, if Reece had been involved in what happened to her, then surely he would have been paying attention when the news said she had been fished out of the water, that Adrian had pulled her out. This was the point that Adrian was stuck on. How much did Reece actually know?

He obviously knew his wife was missing from their home, but did he know where she was? Did he know what had happened and why? When he opened the door and saw Adrian standing there, did he know that Adrian had pulled her from the river?

More secrets. More lies.

‘Find anything interesting?’ Imogen said, putting a coffee in front of him.

‘Lots of stuff about the business, not much about the man. Literally pages of results online about Corrigan Construction. Charity things, building jobs, but they all seem to be kind of impersonal and distant. There’s got to be more to him than this.’