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T he only place she had to go was Bookmark, but now that Ben had appeared, it didn’t feel safe or secure. Emily locked the front door behind her and went to check that her connecting door was locked too. She used the bathroom, then checked the connecting door a second time. Then she went outside, onto the balcony, took a few deep breaths and tried to calm down.

She wanted to leave, but she had to complete the job. Beth had made it clear: if she didn’t, she’d be back in debt. But did Jack even want to do this now? She’d clearly upset him with her questions about Ben. But then this was what he’d wanted; to get all the information out there. Who, realistically, did he think the murderer of his wife was going to turn out to be? Some passing stranger, who’d found a house at the end of a lane and broken into it to kill the woman who happened to be home, start a fire and flee? In all likelihood, whoever the killer was, it was someone they knew. Someone in their circle.

Someone with a reason.

Like Ben.

Two sharp raps on Bookmark’s front door startled Emily, then froze her with fear.

She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t here. The caller would be able to see the open balcony door through the glass of the front door. She could do what she’d done earlier, maybe – step outside, force the conversation to happen on the deck in full view of the house and within earshot of the courtyard.

But what if she didn’t get a chance to do that? What if whoever it was forced their way in?

‘Emily? You in there?’

Grace’s voice. It was Grace.

Emily’s muscles slackened with relief. When she went inside, she saw Grace on the other side of the glass, looking impatient.

As she started towards the door, she saw something else, sitting on the mat on the floor just inside: Mark’s Olympus voice-recorder.

She bent to pick it up and then let Grace in.

‘You found it,’ she said, assuming she’d just posted it through the letterbox.

‘Found what?’ When Grace saw what Emily was holding, her face changed. ‘What the hell is that? Please tell me you weren’t recording on a personal device. Please tell me you didn’t completely ignore everything I said.’

She grabbed the recorder out of Emily’s hand and pressed one of its buttons, bringing Mark’s faux-serious, sing-song poetry voice into their conversation.

‘— sorrow is the only thing, the only thing, the only—’

Emily grabbed it back and hurried to silence it, fumbling.

‘ —thing that I rest with as you alone see— ’

Grace was smirking.

‘ —me as a— ’

Finally, mercifully, Emily hit something that silenced it.

‘Who’s that?’ Grace asked.

‘My boyfriend.’ Colour was blooming on Emily’s cheeks. ‘I brought it with me but obviously, after what you said, I didn’t use it. It’s been in my bag since I arrived. Or I thought it was. I discovered earlier that it was missing. I thought it had fallen out somewhere, and you’d found it and returned it to me.’

‘Nope.’ Grace lifted a white paper bag onto the breakfast bar. ‘I’m just delivering your dinner. And grabbing my laptop.’

‘So we’re done for the day?’

She nodded. ‘But Jack suggested you start at nine tomorrow, to make up for it.’

So, for now at least, he still wanted to talk.

‘There’s a bottle of wine in there,’ Grace added.

‘For what?’

‘ Drinking ,’ she said, managing to fit an eye-roll in between the syllables. ‘It’s been a long day. Do you want it or not?’

‘No, no. I do. Thank you.’

But now, in the natural moment for Grace to turn on her heel and leave, she didn’t. She was hovering, shifting her weight from foot to foot, and looking at Emily as if she were expecting, no, hoping that—

‘Do you …?’ Emily hesitated. ‘Would you like to have a glass?’

‘Sure,’ Grace said immediately.

Emily tried not to look too surprised. They hadn’t got off on the right foot – or any foot, full stop – but it wasn’t incomprehensible that Grace might want someone to talk to. They were isolated here, in a crazy situation, and it had been a particularly crazy day. And from what Ruth had said, Grace truly cared about Jack. She might be genuinely upset about the arrest news and not feel like she could express that to the rest of them.

‘By the way,’ Emily said as she went looking for clean glasses, ‘I think I need to apologize to you. I got my wires crossed, when I first got here. I thought you worked for Morningstar, that they had sent you. I didn’t realize until last night that you actually work for Jack.’

‘You thought I was here to do your bidding, and that you were in charge of me, and you resented the fact that I wasn’t acting subordinately. I see.’

Emily found two glasses, unscrewed the cap on the wine and poured it quickly.

‘Like I said,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

She was already regretting extending this invite.

‘Apology accepted.’ Grace took a glass, then a generous sip of her wine. ‘And by the way , I have a master’s degree. And I’m twenty-six.’

Even though Emily didn’t verbally react to this, her face must have betrayed her surprise.

‘And you might think I’m sure, but I’m not,’ Grace added. ‘About Jack, I mean.’ She took another, longer sip. ‘I shouldn’t be drinking. Technically, I’m on the clock. I still have those transcripts to do.’

‘I didn’t realize you were doing that. You type up everything, every day?’

She nodded. ‘I have to. The recordings are destroyed.’

‘ What? ’

‘That’s part of the deal,’ Grace said. ‘You do a day, I type up the transcripts, the recording is deleted.’

This was news to Emily, and also nonsensical.

‘But the transcripts say the same thing,’ she said. ‘So what does the deleting achieve?’

Grace shrugged. ‘It’s just a way of making sure that those audio recordings never get out. Transcripts aren’t as sexy, I guess, to the Daily Fail and their friends.’ She drank some more. There was now barely a mouthful left in her glass but when Emily lifted the bottle, she shook her head and pulled her glass away. ‘I’ll only have one.’

‘It’s OK not to be sure, you know. About Jack.’

‘I know ,’ Grace snapped. ‘I can’t see into his mind, can I? I’m not psychic. And I listen to enough podcasts to know that people can hide their true natures. So who would be sure? Only an idiot. And I’m not an idiot. But if you put a gun to my head and told me I had to go one way or the other, I’d say he didn’t do it. Because all I can do is come back to the logic of it all. Which is, why would a guilty man do this?’

‘What?’

‘ This! ’ Grace waved the hand that wasn’t holding the wine glass. ‘This book. Any book. Why bring this circus into town when things had just quietened down? Because it’s not money. He doesn’t seem to care about that anymore. And it can’t be attention, because he hates that. One of the last things we had in the diary before the fire was opening a bricks-and-mortar store in Galway, and trying to get Jack to do PR for it was like pulling teeth. He agreed to one feature for a broadsheet and ended up yelling at the photographer.’

‘But if he hates attention,’ Emily said, ‘then why write a memoir?’

‘ Exactly .’ Grace snapped her fingers. ‘That’s exactly my point. If it’s not for the money and it’s not for the attention, doesn’t that only leave the reason he says? That he’s innocent and wants to prove it so the person who did do this can be found and punished? Isn’t that the only thing that makes any sense?’

Grace’s eyes seemed to be pleading with Emily to say yes, but the most she could muster was a neutral mmm noise.

‘Did you know Kate well?’ she asked, to change the subject.

‘I mean, we weren’t friends ,’ Grace said, ‘but yeah. A little. I met her a few times.’

‘What was she like?’

‘She was great.’

‘What were they like together?’

‘Different,’ Grace said. ‘To other couples. At least, the ones I know. It felt like they were really a team. And she was so protective of him, always. Looking after him when he didn’t always look after himself. Trying to minimize his stress, keep things off his plate, make sure he slept and ate. I suppose, now, I feel like …’ She stopped, swallowed. ‘I try to do that now, because I don’t think anyone else is looking out for him or his interests. And I don’t think he’s quite realized that yet.’

‘That’s why you called Ruth?’

Grace nodded silently.

‘What did he say about that?’

‘Nothing, yet.’

‘Grace, was it Ben? In the courtyard last night? The man you saw?’

‘It couldn’t have been, he only arrived yesterday.’

But she looked down into her almost empty wine glass as she said it. Emily had the distinct impression that Grace was lying. Or that she didn’t want to contradict whatever lies Ben was telling.

Grace asked if she could use the bathroom then, and disappeared into it.

Emily was picking up her wine glass to take another sip when she saw something small and white lying on the floor in the nook.

For a second she thought it was something Grace had dropped and started towards it, intending to pick it up for her. But as she got closer, she saw that it was a piece of paper, folded multiple times until it was about the size of a credit card, and that it was just a couple of inches from the connecting door. Too far from the bathroom for Grace to have accidentally dropped it.

It had been slipped beneath the connecting door, from the other side.

Emily’s insides filled with dread.

She picked it up and started back towards the kitchen, unfolding the paper close to her chest, so she’d easily be able to disappear it if Grace abruptly re-emerged. It was a sheet of A4 with only one sentence on it, written in block capitals.

TELL JACK NOW OR I WILL TELL EVERYONE.