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On the second of June, I arrived at my Monday check-in with Gael feeling like I was made of anxiety, even having written up the fragments of information I’d picked up at the cricket match.

I’d listened back to all of it on the Bluetooth recorder and made as much of it as I could, conscious of needing to prove I was getting somewhere now that I was fully a part of the group, and equally conscious that my four-week deadline had already been reduced to three weeks and a half.

Two and a half weeks of term, and a week of debauched revelry in the madness of what was known as May Week after it was officially over.

But Gael was clearly satisfied by the story of Ryan’s drinking, and even more so by my explanation of Tess’s story and James’s death stare.

‘When are you seeing them again?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I told him. ‘Wine tasting.’

I said it with breezy confidence, but after Esther had messaged to invite me, I’d spent the train journey racked with anxiety about the event.

Wine is obviously something I know zero about, which wouldn’t be so bad if upper-class people with money weren’t so hot on knowing all about it.

And Aria Lauder’s parents were known as big buyers of wine.

The idea of turning up and saying totally the wrong thing was making me sick with nerves.

The trouble was, I felt totally unable to admit to anyone that I hadn’t actually got this.

I couldn’t destroy the image I’d built up at work of being the Cambridge professor’s daughter from an Ivy League university; and the idea of asking Dad or Cordelia for more help was just humiliating.

I’d leaned on them both a heap already and was beginning to worry they thought I was incompetent.

And to be honest, there was a limit to how much either of them could teach me in thirty-six hours.

I wouldn’t have a chance to taste a bunch of wines with them, which was the only way I was going to get half decent at this stuff.

So I’d done as much googling as I could about terroir , and region, and length, and then I’d looked up the wines we were going to taste.

Gael seemed totally pumped by the concept, anyway.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said. ‘They’ll be inebriated and easy to direct.

Ryan may get drunk again, which will let you see what he’s like or get him to confess what he’s done before.

And the others might have something to say about Holly.

James, too, maybe, if he’s pissed off with you for talking to this other girl at the cricket. ’

‘Great,’ I said, trying to catch his enthusiasm for it all. It was an opportunity to find out more, and things could so easily kick off. I’d make progress.

Though as I remembered James’s flat stare all over again, I felt a flicker of worry.

There was nervous energy running through me as Esther led me into what was apparently the smaller dining room at Magdalene College (which, by the way, is pronounced nothing like it looks.

This place, Reid). We’d met at the college gates, and Esther seriously wasn’t helping my nerves by talking at length about a Haut Lafitte tasting she’d been to earlier in the year.

‘I really hadn’t expected some of the palates,’ she told me. ‘Have you ever tried their white Bordeaux? It’s extraordinary. Almost crystallised.’

‘I have not,’ I told her, with as light a laugh as I could manage. ‘But I believe you.’

I was momentarily rescued at the doorway by Kit calling from across the dining room.

He and Ryan were standing alongside a table covered with different-shaped glasses.

No Sarah tonight, it seemed. But then, it probably wasn’t surprising.

Cordelia had told me that Kit’s girlfriends were only add-ons rather than core members of the group.

Which might be healthy, or might be about Kit keeping a level of control over the people in his life.

I scanned the room and realised with a flicker of further anxiety that James was already here, too.

He was deep in conversation with an expensively tailored man who must have been my dad’s age and an extremely pretty, dark-haired woman of probably close to my own.

I braced myself. There was every chance James had told the room I’d been gossiping behind his back.

After this thought came another one: I realised my expectation that the wine tasting would be students only was way off.

It was run by the Wine Society, which was a student society officially, but only half the occupants of the room looked to be undergrad age.

The rest were a whole spread of other ages, and some of them were at least in their sixties.

Ryan gave me a warm hug as I arrived, but I could sense tension in him, and I realised that this event might actually be worse for him than it was for me.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’ Which was basically my tactful way of saying, Why is a teetotaller at a wine tasting?

He gave me a tight smile. ‘Yeah, Esther talked me into it.’ He added, more quietly, ‘I won’t be swallowing any.’

I blinked at him, thinking that this sounded like the craziest test of willpower I’d ever heard. But I couldn’t say a lot else without embarrassing him. So I changed the subject to rugby.

While we spoke, I was half listening to Kit teasing Esther for the amount of work she was doing. It was gently done, but I sensed a serious undercurrent.

‘I’m honestly doing hardly any!’ she eventually protested, with what almost sounded like a note of stress. ‘Around all the social stuff we’re doing, it’s barely ten hours in a day, and my nightmare exams are on Thursday and Friday. I shouldn’t even be here.’

That comment drew my attention. She’d been talked into coming out in the middle of her exams? With only two days until the next one? I would have been cramming in a panic at that stage, with at most a brief pint of soda with my friends before returning to my room.

At the same time, I wondered whether ten hours was a usual amount of study for her, because it didn’t leave much room for other stuff.

I really wanted to join their conversation.

To ask questions and find out what made Esther tick; what might tip her over the edge.

I wanted to see under Esther’s surface and work out whether her affectionate side could turn obsessive.

There was a loud laugh from James’s group, and we all of us ended up stopping to look over. It was the well-tailored older guy, guffawing at something the pretty dark-haired girl had said.

James, I thought, looked embarrassed to be there. I wasn’t sure if it was the company or the event, though he definitely fitted the aesthetic. His Greek-statue face, tumbling hair and slim build suited his old-fashioned tuxedo perfectly, and I suddenly saw how he must be on stage.

The pretty young woman leaned over to talk to him, and James visibly relaxed a little.

I wondered whether she was a new love interest. If she was, she would apparently be the first person James had considered since Holly’s death.

His social media and Cordelia agreed on this.

But as the rest of my group started to talk again the girl detached herself and moved away across the room, leaving James to drift over to us.

I saw James look towards me and then away, and was sure there was a grilling of some kind coming. It couldn’t have been clearer that he’d disliked me talking to gossip-loving Tess.

I decided I needed a glass of wine to calm the roiling nerves in my stomach. There were a few people already drinking champagne and near us on the table was what looked like my kind of light red, so I reached out to take one and offered a glass to Esther, too.

‘Oh,’ she said, quietly, turning towards me. ‘I… do you really want to drink a red before a tasting? I don’t even know why they’ve served it.’

I felt the jolt of a misstep. It was like they’d set up a trap for me to walk into.

‘New secretary,’ Kit said, leaning in. ‘Doesn’t know the rules.’

There was something about his expression that challenged me, and you know I can’t say no to a challenge, Reid. I laughed and knocked a large mouthful of the (actually really nice) wine back.

‘As far as I’m concerned,’ I said after I’d swallowed it, ‘the rule is “Drink what you feel like drinking right now”. I have a day off training tomorrow for the first time in two weeks. Screw saving my palate for a load of wines I’ll probably dislike.’

Kit gave a slow smile, and then– slightly to my surprise– picked a glass up, too.

‘I’ll drink to that.’

After a moment, Esther glanced at the second glass I was still holding, and said, ‘You know, I like your rule better.’

Ryan glanced towards a cluster of older men and shook his head with a smile. ‘I’m not going to join in. You’re all making me look like a pleb.’

I couldn’t help giving a shocked laugh. ‘Nobody actually says “pleb”.’

‘Only a pleb would say that,’ Ryan countered with a grin. I shook my head at him, sure that this was all just an excuse not to drink but also thinking the language was a little… off. It was, I realised, the first time I’d heard any of them sound snobby about anything.

James had drifted over to us by this point, and was watching us consideringly.

‘I’ll leave you all to it,’ Ryan went on, ‘and go and chat up the elderlies for a bit. Get it out of the way.’

He squared his shoulders and moved towards the cluster of fifty- and sixty-year-olds, where he was immediately accosted by the well-tailored man who’d been talking to James.

‘Ohhh, is that Ryan’s dad?’ I asked, delighted. ‘Explains so much.’

‘Er, no,’ James said after a momentary pause. ‘That’s my dad, trying to charm everyone, as usual.’ As I looked at him, startled, he added, ‘Sorry. Can’t really… do anything about it.’