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‘ I know ,’ Jack said.

Emily looked up at him in alarm. Her heart was pounding so hard, she was afraid he’d heard it.

‘But that is me,’ he added. ‘I swear.’

It took her a beat to understand that he was attributing her shock to his changing appearance.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not what …’ But she trailed off, whatever words she’d been about to say lost in her own racing thoughts.

On the night Jack’s wife died, he wasn’t at home because he was meeting Ben, who’d never showed.

Ben, who owned this house they were currently holed up in.

Ben, who’d followed Emily around town and let himself in here last night, while his best friend – his brother – was under the impression he was at home in France, thousands of miles away.

Was Ben all over this story because he was Jack’s best friend or because he had something to do with this?

Could Ben be responsible for Kate’s death?

Emily felt like she was manoeuvring around a pitch-black room with only a candlestick for light; she could see some things pretty clearly, but most things not at all. She had the sense that she was surrounded by hidden objects, cloaked in shadow, almost within reach but still invisible for now.

She needed to find the light switch, to see the whole room at once.

Meanwhile, Jack’s expression had morphed into one of confused concern. He retracted the phone, pulling it to his stomach.

‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

The problem was that she had no idea how Jack felt, or what he could or couldn’t see, or even in what direction he was looking.

And Ben was his best friend. Former teammate. Brother .

She had to tread carefully here.

‘Emily?’

She needed more. To find out more, first.

‘Ah … Sorry.’ She straightened up, cleared her throat. ‘God, I just totally blanked there. I was going to ask you something but the question fell right out of my head …’ She frowned for effect, as if she were putting physical effort into trying to remember. ‘What were we talking about? Oh – I know what it was. The house. How you ended up doing this here. How did that happen?’

Jack gave her an odd look, one that made her hold her breath.

But then he moved to return to the couch, and while his back was turned she quickly exhaled in relief.

‘Doing it back home was ruled out right from the beginning,’ he said as he sat down. ‘And the UK wasn’t far enough away, not when the vultures can get a flight there for less than a taxi to the airport. I was thinking France, and so I asked Ben for ideas, and that’s when he suggested here. Offered it. It wasn’t even furnished yet, but he got it all sorted out for us.’

‘I take it this is an investment property?’

Jack nodded. ‘He has a few.’

‘Cycling must be more lucrative than I thought.’

‘It’s not at all. Most professional cyclists are working for the average industrial wage. Even the top guys only make a fraction of what, like, footballers and Formula 1 drivers and golfers make. And we were never the top guys. We might’ve been, if we’d had more time, but after the crash …’ He seemed to follow that sentence off the side of the mountain for a second; he looked lost in thought. But then, ‘No. Ben grew his own fortune. He owns a company that leases private jets.’

‘Nice.’

‘It must be,’ Jack said with a wry smile.

None of this was helping Emily figure out what the hell was going on.

‘Let’s get back to that evening,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be meeting Ben, even though you don’t feel like it because you’re tired, but Kate, for some reason, seems adamant that you go. What time did you leave the house?’

‘Around six-thirty. The pub where we were meeting was a half-hour’s drive away. The River Inn.’

‘Where was Ben staying?’

‘I don’t know. I probably did at some point, but I’ve forgotten. It might have been near Shannon Airport. He’d occasionally have meetings there, or near there.’

‘Why not meet him somewhere closer?’

‘When you live out in the middle of nowhere,’ Jack said, ‘a half-hour’s drive away is close.’

‘And you were going to drive home?’

‘After just one pint, with food.’

‘Did you drink that pint?’

‘I was about halfway down it when Jim came in.’

‘The neighbour who alerted you?’

Jack nodded. ‘Our house is at the very end of a lane. There’s only one other property on it, halfway along, and that’s where Jim lives. Jim Mullin. He has his own car dealership. Very nice guy.’ His face changed. ‘His wife was at home, saw the flames, called 999. Then she called him, and he was on his way home, which took him past the River Inn, and he happened to see my car parked outside. So he came in and, ah …’ He swallowed. ‘He came in and said I had to come now, that there was a fire. I remember asking him questions, because I didn’t really understand, but he was physically manoeuvring me out of the pub, into the car park, into his car … I don’t remember much about the drive, but I remember coming up the lane and seeing flames.’

He stopped and looked at Emily expectantly, as if seeking direction.

‘It must have been dark,’ she said.

‘It was. And there were no flashing blue lights yet, they hadn’t arrived. Just a couple of neighbours who’d parked up and put their headlights on. Because of course, out in the country, it’s actually dark. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face on that lane, at night.’

‘What did you do?’

Jack chewed his lip. ‘This sounds awful now, I know, but you see, the fire started in the master bedroom. Upstairs and at the back. So while I could see there was a fire, it seemed contained there. So I was thinking, oh my God, our house. We could lose it. We could lose everything inside it, everything we own. That was my panic. Because it was, like, half-eight on a Saturday night. Kate would’ve been downstairs watching TV. She would’ve smelled the smoke and run outside. When I got out of the car, there were a few people standing around, and I presumed Kate was one of them. There were people who said I ran straight into the house screaming her name, but they’re remembering it wrong. I was calling her name, yeah, but because I thought she was standing outside the house with the rest of them and I just couldn’t see her in the dark. I didn’t think for one second that—’ He stopped, abruptly. ‘When I couldn’t find her, that’s when I realized.’

Jack took a deep breath.

Emily held hers.

‘I only really have flashes,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking, only doing. The front door was locked. I had my key in my pocket. I opened it. I went in. All the lights were off. Or the electricity was gone, I’m not sure. The fire alarms were blaring. I never realized before how loud they are … But actually, in my memory, the fire was louder. I couldn’t see much of it – just a glow, upstairs, on the landing – but I could hear it crackling and … And sort of roaring? And the heat was … The heat was something else. Outside, I’d been able to see my breath. Inside, sweat was pouring off me. It was in my eyes, making them sting, and the smoke was making them sting more … And it was so thick. The smoke, I mean. Solid, almost. Like looking into a wall. I couldn’t see anything around me. I called out her name. I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight, but that didn’t help that much. It just showed me the smoke.’

He stopped here and Emily prompted softly, ‘What did you do?’

‘I pointed it at the ground and I saw the stairs. The end of the banister. I thought Kate would’ve been in the kitchen, because that’s where we usually hung out. So now I knew where I was and I was going to head that way when … When I stepped on something.’

Jack’s voice was growing thick with emotion.

‘What I remember is her hand,’ he said. ‘Her left hand, with her rings. It was perfect. It looked like it always did. And I thought, she’s unconscious. She’s passed out. Get her outside, get some air, get in the ambulance that must be on the way, and she’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. And then … Then I moved the beam of the flashlight up, to her face. And I saw that she wasn’t OK at all.’

His voice cracked, letting something like a sob escape, and even though she wanted him to continue, Emily couldn’t help but suggest they take a break.

‘No,’ he said immediately, forcefully. ‘No, I want to get it over with. And there’s not much more to say, anyway. I’m not going to go into the details of her … Of what I saw. If people who buy this book end up being disappointed about the fact that I didn’t describe exactly how my wife’s face was … was gone , then tough shit. Fuck you. And maybe, you know, see someone about that, because you’re a sick individual.’

‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ Emily said. ‘If this is too upsetting, we can move on. But I’m just thinking about this from the reader’s point of view. I’m hearing this story for the first time, so if I’m wondering something – if I have a question – there’s every chance the reader will have it too.’

Jack looked at her coldly, accusingly. ‘What are you wondering?’

‘Well, ah …’ Emily felt her face flush. ‘When did you realize that she was …?’

‘Dead?’ he said flatly. ‘I picked her up. I brought her out and someone took her away from me. I was put in an ambulance, and they were treating my hands, and I remember someone coming to tell me, “She’s gone.” I thought they meant to the hospital, but then I understood.’

‘So when you carried her outside …?’

‘I didn’t know then,’ Jack said, his jaw set tight. ‘No.’ He paused. ‘She was still warm.’

Noise then. Voices, from downstairs. Doors opening and closing. The smooth tones of what might be a cable news channel. It sounded like the others had arrived back at the house far sooner than Jack had anticipated.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Jack said. ‘I know I’m the one who’s put me in this situation. I don’t want to take it out on you. But this is … This is awful.’

‘It’s OK. I know it is.’

‘What else do you think the reader would want to know?’

‘Um, well …’ She stroked the trackpad of the laptop and squinted at the screen as if scanning her notes, but the truth was she hadn’t typed a word and all she was looking at was a virtual blank page. ‘You can put as much or as little detail as you like into this book – and specifically into this chapter. It’s entirely up to you. But if I’m playing the reader here, there’s one very important question that you haven’t really answered. Or explained, let’s say. Explained is a better word.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Your hands.’

Jack looked down at them, turning them over, as if seeing them for the first time.

‘I read somewhere,’ Emily pushed on – with a lie – ‘that Kate didn’t suffer any burns. That she was downstairs and the fire broke out upstairs, and was extinguished before it could travel to the hallway area. And you said you only went in as far as the stairs, in the hall, so … If you weren’t in the parts of the house that were on fire, how did you burn your hands?’

Jack stared at her for what felt like an excruciatingly long time.

‘Debris,’ he said then. ‘The fire was upstairs, yeah, but the roof was burning. The hall is double-height. Crap was falling down and it was on fire. I was batting it away, and pushing it away, and lifting it out of my way to get to Kate. Where Kate was, she would’ve been sheltered. She was under a ceiling. And it wasn’t just my hands either.’

He stood up and, without warning, turned around and lifted his T-shirt, revealing a horrific slash of deep, red welt branded diagonally across his back.

‘They think I got that from a falling joist that had been in the attic,’ he said.

Emily stared at it, her mouth slack with shock.

Someone had once told her that burning alive only hurts at the start, that once the fire burns through the top layer of skin, your nerve-endings have burned away with it. But that person hadn’t had any first-hand experience. How could this not have caused Jack excruciating, unimaginable pain? It wasn’t just the act of the burning itself, although that must have been horrific – it looked like something hot had pressed itself against Jack’s skin until it melted away, until the thing had melted into his skin and the soft tissue underneath, like the wax around the wick of a candle. But then there’d been the wound. Followed by treatment, surgeries, skin grafts. Bandages, dressings and creams.

All while his grief was fresh and raw.

And then, on top of all that, suspicion.

Jack let the shirt drop, turned back around and sat down again.

Emily took a shallow breath, tried to gather herself. ‘I’m sorry. That that happened to you.’ She meant it.

A shrug. ‘That was the least of it, wasn’t it?’

‘Jack, I need to tell you something.’ The red light on the voice-recorder flashed in her peripheral vision. ‘But maybe we shouldn’t record it.’ She reached over, picked the device up and powered it down.

Then she held it up so that he could see that it was no longer recording.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked, frowning. ‘What is it?’

There was more noise from downstairs. Someone heading out into the courtyard while having a somewhat shouted conversation with someone else who was still inside. Ruth, probably. Going out for a smoke. They were lucky they hadn’t been interrupted yet.

‘Did Kate know Ben well?’

She watched Jack’s reaction carefully, but saw only confusion, not suspicion.

‘Why?’

‘Just – did she?’

‘Of course she did. He’s my best friend. Best man at our wedding. And she knew him from before too. He was the guy she was seeing when I first met her.’

‘Wait – Kate left Ben for you?’

‘You make it sound like they were married. We were in our twenties and they’d been having a casual thing. And this was years ago. Before we got together, and fell in love, and actually got married. It was ancient history.’

He waved a hand dismissively to reiterate his point.

She wanted to go back to the transcript of their earlier conversation and check exactly what Jack had said about that, because in her memory he hadn’t at all made it sound like the guy she’d been with was his good friend, his teammate, a brother , according to him.

‘I think he’s here, Jack. He’s the guy I saw. The one that was following me around town. Who I think was also the guy Grace says she saw in the courtyard last night.’

He scoffed. ‘That’s ridiculous. Ben is in France .’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Why would he lie?’

‘What’s he like?’ she asked. ‘Ben. As a person?’

A shadow crossed Jack’s face. ‘What the …? Wait a second.’ He stood up. ‘What are you doing? What is this? I didn’t hire you so you could go around making up paranoid conspiracy theories and implicating my friends.’

‘But I—’ Emily started just as the door opened and Ruth walked in, bringing the smell of a recently smoked menthol cigarette with her.

They both turned to look at her and she looked from Jack to Emily and back to Jack again, concerned and questioning.

Emily wondered if she’d been outside, listening, and timed her entry to stop things escalating.

‘You need to come downstairs,’ she told Jack. She looked directly at Emily as she added, ‘Ben is here.’