What the hell was this? It was nothing like his first book. Obviously she wasn’t expecting it to be polished, being his initial draft, but this was far from the quality of Don’t Breathe. The sentence structure was all over the place. The description was clunky and the dialogue was awkward. This had to be a joke. Maybe he’d left this decoy document open on purpose, knowing she might look? She scrolled through the pages, but it was more of the same. And there was too much material here for it to be a decoy. She read a character description that caught her eye: ‘Detective Bonnie had legs up to her armpits. And breasts that a man could bury his face in. Her blue eyes sparkled like sapphires above her ruby red lips.’

Andrea wanted to gag. Don’t Breathe was smart. The characters were well drawn and the writing far from this clichéd example. What the hell had happened? She started to read more but then she realised the sound of the shower had stopped. She quickly scrolled through the pages, returning the document to its original place. Then she hurried over to the front door, opened it and slammed it shut.

‘Andrea? That you?’ he called.

‘It’s me,’ she called back.

A moment later he appeared from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist. ‘You’re back sooner than expected.’

‘I know. Heather claimed she was too tired for me to stay.’

‘Sorry, honey. That’s a shame.’

She saw his eyes stray to the computer. Then he wandered over to it and gently closed it.

CHRISTMAS EVE

The Good Samaritan, the first person to stop at the accident, was relieved to hear that the woman’s husband hadn’t been thrown from the car after all. The scene in front of him was overwhelming enough as it was. The idea of having to search through it all for someone else — potentially even a dead body — was terrifying.

And the emergency dispatcher on the phone kept asking him difficult questions. He was frightened he might get one of the answers wrong.

The second guy to stop, the one who said it was his mum’s car, had asked him to stay with his mother, keep an eye on her while he figured out which car to go to next.

‘Sir, did I hear you say someone was missing from one of the vehicles?’ the dispatcher asked now.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘No, sorry that was a false alarm. No one was thrown from the car.’

This time, though, his answer was wrong.

Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Friday 18 December

Mimi

She was feeling rather delightfully giddy as she shuffled sideways along the row past the tucked-up knees of various parents and grandparents. Pete had driven so Mimi had been able to do the one thing she and the other mums had always joked about doing — watch a very long school performance while mildly pissed.