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Anyhow, none of Kit’s group stumbled into the coffee shop, and my research into who’d been on the previous year’s hockey and rugby teams proved to be grindingly slow.

By the end of the day I’d only managed to find out one set of hockey girls’ names from a fixture list and I’d made little progress in working out which colleges any of them went to or how to make contact.

I was suffering caffeine withdrawal and feeling grouchy by the time I went to change for my London meeting with Cordelia.

She’d asked me to come for a drink at her mother’s club, like that was a normal thing, and wanted to meet at six, because it was the only way she’d have time to fit me in before a 7.

30 mother–daughter dinner. Unlike the third-years I was infiltrating here who were in the midst of exams, Cordelia, as a second-year medical student, was very much still working a full-time schedule at this point and had practicals most days.

Which meant, apparently, shadowing doctors or attending classes or practising diagnosing patients.

It sounds like genuine fun to me and I can see why Cordelia enjoys it.

An hour later, at the Caledonian Club, I found her waiting for me in the tartan-carpeted members’ bar with a whisky sour (mine) and a matching mocktail (hers). And by the way, another rich venue, another insane choice of carpet. Someone should give the money to people with actual taste.

I couldn’t help grinning at Cordelia as she lifted her drink at me, her expression managing to be both wry and curious. I was definitely thinking of her more as a friend than as a source of information by then.

‘I’ve got forty-five minutes before I’ll need to be getting into the shower,’ she told me as she led me away from the bar to a table in the very far corner.

It was screened from view by a glass partition.

Useful in case someone relevant happened to recognise us, which I’d learned was weirdly possible with Kit Frankland’s kind of people and this kind of place.

‘Mama has booked me a room, so at least I’ve got facilities on standby. ’

It hit me, all over again, how different life must be if you had money. How much less time you must spend dragging dresses over your head in restaurant bathrooms or taxis. How much more elegantly made-up it would be possible to look because you could rely on good lighting in a proper mirror.

Cordelia seemed to catch what I was thinking. ‘You should get your dad to stump up for membership somewhere for you,’ she said, wryly. ‘He must have a club somewhere.’

‘Oh…’ This was an awkward point. Dad did, indeed, have club membership, though he’d chosen the much more modern Pavilion Club. Membership was his way of having a home from home when he stayed in London, which he did a crazy amount of the time. Bored and lonely, like I said.

But Dad had obviously never offered me membership, or any other financial support beyond dinners out, and I was equally obviously never going to ask. For all Dad and I were in many ways closer than Cordelia and her mother, it just didn’t work like that for us.

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I said, as breezily as possible. ‘Maybe I should arrange it.’ And then I went on, ‘I wanted to ask you about Esther. She told me she was meeting up with an old flame for breakfast. Do you know who she might mean?’

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, she’s dated a few Cambridge boys,’ she said. ‘Any specifics?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She mentioned it having no future because he was inappropriate.’

This seemed to genuinely surprise Cordelia.

‘That’s… interesting. I mean, Esther’s mother is totally determined for her to marry a rich boy.

And the right kind of one, too, and Esther pretty much lives to do what Mummy says.

’ She chewed her lip for a minute. ‘I can’t think of anyone I know about.

And Holly would have told me anyone she knew about, so maybe this is someone from the last few months. Though “old flame” is…’

‘It implies before that, doesn’t it?’ I said.

‘So maybe school?’ Cordelia suggested.

‘But why inappropriate?’ I asked. ‘Surely she went to the best school.’

‘She went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College,’ Cordelia said. ‘Girls only. So anyone she met wouldn’t have been a school-friend. And she’s definitely straight.’

‘She said “him”,’ I agreed. I’d listened back to the recording to make sure.

‘Teacher’s kid?’ she offered. ‘Local boy?’

‘Could be,’ I agreed. ‘I’d be really interested to know, though. I’m guessing he wasn’t at the ball…’

‘I’m pretty sure not,’ Cordelia said, ‘but then, I don’t know his name.’ She gave a shrug. ‘Sounds like we need to find out more about him.’

‘I hard agree with that,’ I said. ‘OK, I’ll see if I can get her to tell me.’ I took another swallow of cocktail. ‘There’s something I wanted you to try and remember, too,’ I told her. ‘Something from eighteen months ago, so it’s a reach, but…’

I could see Cordelia sitting up, her face alive with interest. ‘I can try,’ she said. ‘About Holly?’

‘Yeah.’ I mean, it was about Holly. Even if it was about Tanya, too.

I wasn’t being deceptive, Reid. ‘There was a thing that happened. The death of another student, which was… well, it was, like, crazy similar to the way Holly died. An overdose that made no sense in someone who just wouldn’t have taken those drugs. The police not investigating enough.’

‘Who? A Cambridge student?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She was called Tanya Murray, and she died nineteen months ago. And the reason I’m asking is, I just found out Kit and Ryan were at a formal exchange with her the night before. Nobody’s clear on what happened that night, but I think Holly might have seen something.’

There was a beat. A pause. And then something in Cordelia’s mouth twisted.

‘Sorry, but she didn’t see anything,’ she said. ‘She didn’t say a word to me about witnessing a crime, and she would have done.’

‘She might not have shared the details,’ I pushed. ‘These were her friends. She thought they were good people. If she witnessed something and really, honestly thought it was just an accident, she would have wanted to hide it. To protect them.’

‘No, she wouldn’t,’ Cordelia said, flatly. ‘She would have told them to go to the police. She was a sympathetic person, but she was also an intensely moral one.’

‘Well, what if it wasn’t something that even meant anything at the time?’ I tried, realising that I’d gone about this the wrong way. Of course Cordelia didn’t want to hear Holly criticised. Of course she didn’t. Holly was so much on a pedestal to her that this was too much.

I could see that she was watching me with a totally different expression now. The kind of expression reserved for an animal you don’t trust.

‘Maybe something happened that just looked like one of the boys being full on and then getting rejected by Tanya,’ I said, slowly.

‘And then they said something incriminating that made her realise they’d tried to go after her.

Maybe Kit, I don’t know… said he’d walk her home and then…

then said the wrong thing later about what had happened. Maybe that’s why she was killed.’

Cordelia was shaking her head at me, her jaw set. ‘You don’t know what she was like,’ she said, quietly. ‘She wouldn’t have let them follow some girl home.’

I wanted, so badly, to argue with her just then. To say that there was something wrong with Ryan when he drank, and that Kit was pulling all their strings. And that Holly had been happy to overlook that. She would forgive a lot in her friends.

It occurred to me, suddenly, that there was a whole part of Holly’s behaviour that had never quite made sense if I believed Cordelia’s account. Holly had always said she’d hated the overprivileged, wasteful side of the way these people lived.

And yet what had she done with her parents’ inheritance? She’d used it to pay for the most exclusive of schools. Had that been her guardians’ idea, or hers? Because she surely must have gone along with it if that money had been left in trust.

Then, later, she’d gone to Cambridge and, instead of distancing herself from the rich crowd, she’d sought them out. That rich crowd had enabled her to live a glamorous, expensive lifestyle that was beyond her means. The lifestyle she’d always claimed to hate but which she hadn’t really, had she?

What would she have been willing to overlook, to keep living like that? I wondered.

I looked back at Cordelia, at the defiant expression, and I knew I could never say all this to her. She’d doubled down on this absolute devotion to her lost friend, despite being shaken by those actions, too.

You can’t go up against her faith in Holly , I thought. But maybe, instead, you can appeal to her sense of what’s right.

‘Look,’ I said, calmly. ‘Holly deserves justice. She deserves it so much. But so does Tanya. She didn’t deserve to die, either. And if you can help me with this, even if it isn’t about Holly, then maybe we can solve the murder of another brilliant young woman.’

Cordelia blinked, and I could see that she was thinking this over. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d reached her.

But then, as she spoke, I realised that I’d really, really underestimated Cordelia Wynn.

‘The way you talk about her… about this Tanya…’ She looked at me, searchingly. ‘She’s not just another student, is she? She’s Reid’s sister.’ And then she leaned back in her chair and gave a harsh, bitter laugh. ‘You are a piece of fucking work.’

I genuinely didn’t know what to say for a moment. I hadn’t expected her to work it out, but then I’d been too open with her, hadn’t I? I could only blame myself. Why had I told her so much, when all I should have done was my goddamn job?

‘I’m not– I’m so sorry,’ I told her. ‘This is about Holly. I’m not just interested in Tanya.’

‘I need to go,’ Cordelia said, and she rose, quickly, but with a strangely impressive dignity in her anger. ‘Can you show yourself out, please?’

‘Cordelia–’

‘No,’ she said, firmly. ‘I need you to leave me to think about this.’

Fuck.

That was the main thing I thought as she left.

There was so much that was bad about this. My career was under serious threat, for one. Cordelia could make a complaint to Gael and the Ensign , and that would land me in serious shit. She could also tell the group who I really was and put an end to all this.

Why did you do that, you idiot?

Over and over I thought about what I should have said and berated myself for getting carried away. I must have sat in that chair for a full quarter-hour, on a self-lacerating loop, and I was only kicked out of it by a loud shout of laughter from the bar.

As I peered over the glass screen I realised with horror that one of the two men standing there was Philip Sedgewick. And as I drew in a quick breath he turned and looked right at me.