‘Already?’ Mimi had so much more to say. She wanted to talk with her about her decision to sing in public again. Find out where she’d gained the confidence when in every other respect, it felt like she’d been retreating from the world. She wanted to ask her about Jordan. What if Tara did have it right and he really was her boyfriend? And if not . . . was that something she wanted? When had Callie stopped talking with her? Confiding in her.

‘Yeah, I’m meant to be staying at her house tonight, remember? Oh! There, she is. Peyton, wait!’ Callie called out. ‘Can I go, Mum?’ she added.

‘Of course,’ said Mimi. She couldn’t stop her. Even if she did, Callie wasn’t going to talk.

Callie gave Jill a quick hug. ‘Thanks for coming, Grandma.’ Then she leaned into Tara and whispered something. Tara giggled. She glanced at Mimi and Pete. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.

Mimi noticed ruefully that apparently, Callie only had the capacity to give out the one hug.

And then she was gone.

*

Andrea

It was a combination of things that had her betraying her husband’s trust. Over the past forty-eight hours, Tony’s manuscript had been swimming through her mind. She kept turning it over and over, trying to figure out why it read so differently from his debut. One minute, she’d dismiss it as normal for a rough draft. The next she had flipped. No. It would be impossible to turn what she had read into anything remotely reminiscent of Don’t Breathe. Something wasn’t right.

But then this morning, she was cleaning out her desk ready for the summer holidays and noticed a student’s A+ essay stuck between some folders. She remembered the meeting with the student’s parents. Showing them the essay. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said, ‘but I simply can’t reconcile this work with anything else Sasha has handed in this year.’

Sasha’s father had been perplexed. ‘What are you saying?’

But Andrea had seen the look of resignation in the mother’s eyes.

‘She means Sasha didn’t write this,’ the mother said. ‘She’s had someone else do the work for her.’

As Andrea stared at the essay this morning, it struck her. The difference between Tony’s two books was just as stark as the difference between Sasha’s usual work and her essay.

She means Sasha didn’t write this.

But that was a high school student cheating on an assignment. Surely, she couldn’t be coming to the same conclusion about her husband? It made no sense. If Tony’s new book was the true quality of his work, how had he managed to get someone else to write Don’t Breathe for him? Who would write a knockout novel like that and then let someone else release it under their name? And why wouldn’t Tony get them to also write the next one?