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I t took Emily a while before she felt confident that, when she stood up, her legs would cooperate. She waited another few minutes until the selfie camera on her phone stopped showing her a woman with puffy eyes and blotchy red skin; she couldn’t let anyone see that she’d been crying. This was a game of pretend now, and the only way out – the only safe way – was to play along.

Jack Smyth had just confessed to murdering his wife. What he didn’t know was that he really had . He’d accidentally corroborated Jean’s story. He’d heard the doorbell go twice after he’d killed Kate, but before he’d started the fire. That felt like something tangible, something they could maybe even give to the guards.

And unbeknownst to him, he’d said it all on tape.

Down in the courtyard, Grace was anxiously pacing back and forth by the pool, obviously waiting for her.

‘What happened?’ she asked the moment she saw Emily. ‘Jack said that was the last session, that you’re not doing any more?’

‘Did he?’

What else had he said, Emily wondered? She was running on fumes and didn’t have the energy or the headspace to come up with any lies of her own. The best she could hope for here was that Jack had come up with something she could go along with.

Luckily—

‘He’s too upset.’ Grace’s expression was a mix of pity and apology. ‘He said that talking about Kate so much over the last few days took more out of him than he’d expected. And I guess the business at home isn’t helping now either.’ The business at home . Had that been Jack’s horrifically minimizing phrase, or was it a Grace original? ‘And he said you have enough to get going? That you could write up what you talked about this morning? I’ll go on up and transcribe it now.’

‘We didn’t record anything this morning, Grace.’

She frowned. ‘What? Why not?’

‘It was at Jack’s request. I think he wanted to figure out what he was going to say before he said it. I wrote some notes, but there’s no audio.’

At audio , the phone in Emily’s pocket suddenly seemed to develop its own pulse. She was hyper-aware of its presence, a burn against the denim of her jeans that was threatening to break through to her skin. She was certain that any second now Grace would look down and see its outline – and then into her mind, and know exactly what she’d just done.

‘I guess that means I have the afternoon off,’ Grace said, brightening a little. ‘We both do. Although I should tell you: you might want to pack. Tony is picking you up at five a.m. – sorry about that. But I got you a flight home that’ll have you back in Dublin by Sunday morning. You have a five-hour layover in Charlotte – sorry about that too.’

‘No, that’s great.’ Emily meant it. She couldn’t care less about the details. Any route out of here was a welcome one. Then it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t sound so ecstatic about it, so she said, ‘Is Jack sure about this, though? When is he leaving? What if he decides he wants to do another session first?’

‘He’s out of here a couple of hours after you. He has to fly with Joe and Ruth, so they’re going to Panama City and connecting in New York. Oh, and just FYI: Ben is staying here tonight.’

‘Why?’

Grace shrugged. ‘Don’t know. Maybe they want to catch up. The book stuff is technically finished now, so …’

On one hand, Emily was relieved to hear that Ben would be staying in Beach Read this evening, because the alternative was that it would just be her and Jack here, alone. But she doubted it was because Jack and Ben wanted a catch-up, which made her wonder if this was happening because Ben and Jean had thought he needed to stay here so that Emily wouldn’t be alone with him.

Which made her feel afraid.

But should she be? She never wanted to see Jack Smyth ever again, let alone talk to him, but was there a reason to be physically afraid of him? He was going home to be arrested; she doubted he’d be stupid enough to do anything to make that situation worse. And she didn’t pose a threat to him – he’d made that clear, in the session they’d just had – so as long as she played the game, she should be OK.

Which meant staying here until Tony arrived at 5:00a.m.

She could tell Grace she wanted to leave right now, or that she wanted to spend tonight in a hotel. Or say nothing, call an Uber and just go. Alice would help with sorting flights. But Jack could return at any moment, or Grace could call him to tell him his ghostwriter was escaping, and then there’d be no way to keep playing pretend. Then she would become a threat. And she was getting out of here at 5:00a.m. tomorrow anyway.

‘Jack has the car,’ Grace said, ‘so I can’t leave. I might go for a walk on the beach.’ She raised her eyebrows at Emily. ‘Wanna come?’

‘Ah, no. Sorry. I think I’m going to have a lie-down, actually. My head is starting to throb.’

‘I have some Tylenol, if you want it?’

‘Thanks, but I have something.’

‘Do you need anything else? Did you get some lunch? It’s in the kitchen. I could bring you up a plate?’

‘No, no. I’m fine.’ She had no appetite and was desperate to bring this exchange to a close, to get away, to be alone. ‘Thank you, though.’

‘Dinner will be here at six.’

‘Great.’ Emily turned to go. ‘I’ll see you later.’ She didn’t know if she would, actually, but she didn’t want to prolong this with a goodbye. ‘Enjoy your walk on the beach.’

‘Wait – is that your phone?’

Shit .

Emily said a few more, far worse swear words in her head, then turned back around.

Grace’s eyes had narrowed. ‘Did you have that with you upstairs?’

‘By accident. I totally forgot it was in my pocket. Jack said it was fine, to just stick it in the desk drawer while we talked. So I did.’

He’d actually said that yesterday when she’d genuinely forgotten she’d had her phone with her, but a half-truth was less risky than an all-out lie.

‘You didn’t use it for anything, did you?’ Grace asked.

‘No, no. Of course not.’

Not only was an audio of Jack’s confession on it, but before she’d left the interview room, she’d used her phone to connect the laptop to a personal hotspot and emailed herself the previous days’ transcripts.

‘Because even a note on there—’

‘I didn’t, Grace. It was off the whole time. Don’t worry.’

A beat passed.

‘OK,’ Grace said then, although her face didn’t match the sentiment.

‘Well, anyway …’ Emily just wanted out of here. She turned and started towards the stairs, calling a casual ‘See you later’ over her shoulder as she went.

The first breath she took inside Bookmark with its door closed behind her felt like the first one she’d taken all day.

She started a circuit around the space then, pulling down blinds, securing doors and windows, and checking for any signs that someone had been in here while she was out. There was none. She checked twice that the connecting door on her side was locked, then checked it once more just to be sure.

She pulled out her suitcase, put it on the floor and flipped it open. The Olympus was still hidden in its lining; it had made a reassuring thud as it landed against the edge of the case. She packed up as much as she could for now. She emailed herself a copy of the confession recording.

For one brief, dangerous moment, Emily wondered what would happen if she emailed a copy to the other Emily.

I know who you are. I know what you did. Tell him or I will.

Tell Jack now or I will tell everyone.

And, like a fool, she had.

The anonymous messages had to have come from Jack. Just as Jean had described, that’s what he did. He needled. He undermined. He chipped away until the chips made cracks and he did this until you were all cracks and then, with one last blow, he broke you.

With Emily, his plan must have worked better than he ever could’ve hoped. Maybe he’d always known, somehow, about the true nature of The Witness , or maybe all he’d actually known about was the failure to deliver another book and the twenty-five-grand debt that had forced her to take this job. She could envisage a scenario where he pretended to be hurt by that, to be upset by the fact that his ghostwriter didn’t want to help him tell his truth but had been forced into doing it by her financial situation, and how she’d naturally have moved to reassure him, to overcompensate, to go to great lengths to show she was on his side. Instead, she’d offered up what he thought was her deepest, darkest secret and, in doing so, enough ammunition for Jack to blow up her entire life.

And then a new horror presented itself.

Emily had just secretly recorded Jack as good as confessing to murder. But what if he’d secretly recorded her confessing that Roxie was real? She had a flash of them sitting in the car last night, in Rosemary Beach, Jack slipping his phone down beside him, into the pocket in the driver’s door. Out of her line of sight, but in a position to pick up anything that was said. Had that been his plan all along, to get her admitting everything on tape? To have something to lord over her if she didn’t cooperate? If she threatened to quit?

Or was she underestimating him? Was it all much more sophisticated than that?

With a sudden, sickening clarity, she saw his plan.

He didn’t care that Emily had a secret, or what it was. What mattered to him was what she’d done with it. What mattered to him was The Witness . What was it she’d told him, in the car last night?

I took a real story and changed it. Garnished it with some fiction.

That was going to be his way out.

She was it.

Jack wanted to publish this book, his side of the story. He had to publish it if he was ever going to get the public back on-side. As a bonus, it would give just enough detail to raise questions about Ben as a suspect but not actually ask them, staying on the right side of libel. But the only way that book was going to happen was if Jack did what he’d promised and confessed. How to do that while still maintaining your innocence?

Blame the ghostwriter.

Say she made that bit up. Took his truth and embellished it. It wouldn’t even be the first time. Look, here. She’s done it before.

Her phone buzzed.

A new message.

It’s a feature of 17th-century Bermudian design. Like an outhouse for storing food that needed to be kept cool – an outdoor fridge, basically. The pointed roof is on purpose, something about convection that I don’t understand, but it keeps the warm air off the food .

Mark.

He’d sent an accompanying picture, showing a smaller version of one of Sanctuary’s butteries in situ, in a garden in Bermuda.

And earned her only real smile of the day.

She called him.

‘I have to tell you something,’ she said before he could say anything.

He sighed. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything, Em.’

‘It’s about The Witness .’

‘I already know.’

‘What do you know?’

He hesitated. ‘That you’re Roxie. That what happens in it happened to you.’ He paused. ‘Right?’

Emily felt her world tilt. ‘How long have you known?’

‘Since I read it.’

‘ How did you know?’

‘Because I know you ,’ he said.

The fact that Mark already knew the thing she’d been terrified of telling him – he’d known for nearly as long as they’d been together, and they were still together – was too much to take in. All the guilt, the pain, the anxiety she’d felt about keeping secrets from him dissipated in an instant. He’d discovered them by himself and he was still here. So much weight had just lifted off Emily’s shoulders, she felt light-headed, as if she might float away.

But not all of it.

In that moment, she made a decision: when she got home, she was going to tell him the rest, and then she was going to tell the person who needed to be told, the devastated woman who’d lost her daughter and was desperate to know why.

She was, finally, going to respond to that letter.