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I felt every part of me flinching as I turned my back on that big, empty space and ran back to the house. It was like every time I’d ever run away from the dark as a child, only without the privilege of being able to dismiss my fears as imaginary.

By the time I was back inside, with the door slammed shut behind me, my heart was in my throat. I almost felt like throwing the envelope away in anger at having been scared like this.

But the curiosity was too strong. And so I took a deep breath and peeled it open.

Inside was just one A4 photographic sheet, and I tipped it onto my hand. Someone had laid out three images in what could have been an attractive little triptych: only they were all images of me, taken without my knowledge or consent.

The first was of me heading into the station earlier that night, dressed for my meet-up with Cordelia in London. The second: me climbing into my Uber outside the club, on my way home.

And the third, Reid, was of me locking my bike up right outside the house as I’d arrived home, my stance uneven after the impact of that car, and my head half turned to look for any assailants.

I was looking out for people , I thought, all the hairs standing up on my arms. I was looking out for people, and I never saw them.

They’d been close enough to get my anxious expression as I’d bent down. Close enough to capture the way I’d tucked my trousers into my socks.

And worse than that were the words. There was one underneath each image, making up a single message in Arial typeface:

RUN AWAY HOME

And somehow all the triumph I’d felt evaporated. I didn’t feel like I was on the right track any more. I felt out of my depth, and scared.

I tried to shut out all the more painful thoughts and work out, rationally, who might have been driving that car.

None of the group had so far mentioned having a vehicle in Cambridge, and it would be extremely unusual for an undergrad to have one.

But that didn’t mean they hadn’t hired one for the night.

I also thought about Philip Sedgewick again. He’d apparently heard nothing at the Caledonian Club and wanted to help me, but had that been a pretence?

The only thing in his favour was the difficulty of him managing it. I couldn’t see how he could have ended up in a car in Cambridge at exactly the right time when he’d been going to a dinner. Unless he’d left the dinner and hung around the entrance somewhere without me seeing him.

But it was a big thing to do for a small pay-off, wasn’t it? Wouldn’t it have been easier to wait until a night when he was free and then follow me? Though maybe I was thinking too rationally and not like someone who thought their son’s secrets were under immediate threat.

It was while thinking over his possible guilt that I processed something his friend Max had said in the bar.

I’d better go and find Clarisse…

That had been it, hadn’t it? I was sure he’d said Clarisse.

And I was equally sure that Clarisse was the name of Esther’s high-achieving mother who worked for the UN General Secretariat.

The sort of woman who could probably brush anything she wanted under the carpet and have me chased down and threatened by a driver if someone tipped her off.

Maybe this Max had, or maybe she’d been in the bar earlier on, when I’d been talking to Cordelia. Maybe she’d heard way too much.

I hadn’t yet discovered a reason why Esther might have wanted Holly dead, but I was willing to bet that a woman who’d had Clarisse’s kind of career would not want her daughter going down for murder. I wondered if she might even be able to convince the police not to look into it too closely.

I’ll admit that this might have been a little big conspiracy for daylight hours, but it was 3 a.m., and I was wired with anxiety by this point.

It could have been a totally different Clarisse, or a similar name, but I couldn’t go back and check.

I hadn’t had my voice recorder on because I’d been there to see Cordelia, not to spy.

The worst thing was not having anything I could immediately do. Not about this new threat, and not about Cordelia, either.

I’d had no reply to my message to my former ally, and I had no idea whether she’d already contacted Gael to complain. By morning, I might be pulled off this story, or I might be staying, and in more danger than I’d bargained for.

I must have spent a full half-hour pacing the house, going over all this in my mind, jumping any time I caught sight of my reflection in anything, despite having pulled the curtains firmly over every window.

I needed someone to talk to, and in the end I realised that the only person I really wanted to talk to was you, Reid.

So I did the only vaguely rational version of that I could think of and started writing this down.

It wasn’t exactly comforting to write to you but for a couple of hours I felt a little less totally alone.

Imagining you reading it was… not comforting exactly.

But it wasn’t the same as having nobody, either.

With at least most of it down, I scraped a little sleep– more out of exhaustion than anything else– and hauled my ass onto the river to work out some nerves in the scull.

My leg was hurting like hell just walking there, having swelled further overnight, and it looked bruised and ugly where it was displayed by my Lycra one-piece.

But I could move up and down the slide, at least, and as I worked it got easier to put pressure down.

I was obviously on the lookout for someone throwing a brick off a bridge onto me the whole way, or even for someone firing something off the bank.

It did nothing to improve my already questionable steering on the bends, and when combined with background pain from the leg I ended up seething with frustration at myself, reliving snippets of what Cordelia had said to me, and on the point of tears at my inability to just do something right.

It was humiliating.

I made it the five kilometres up to the lock and then back down to the comparative straight of the Reach before I’d had enough, and then pulled over close to the bank and lay back in my seat with the blades over my chest, trying not to feel like everything was falling apart.

It was at least quiet enough to do that, out here beyond the city and on a day when few crafts were out.

The mantra of You just need more sleep didn’t seem to be working as well as it should have done, and I had a moment of wishing I could just abandon the boat, and Cambridge, and the whole investigation, and walk off somewhere.

During this admittedly pretty self-indulgent sulk someone yelled my name– well, Aria’s name– and I almost jumped out of my skin.

I sat up, wobbly as hell, and was looking wildly for the threat when I realised that it was a cheerfully waving figure.

Kit Frankland’s cheerfully waving figure, in fact, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, his face flushed and a pair of AirPods in his ears. It was clear that he’d been running.

‘Oh,’ I said, trying to give him a smile. ‘Hey.’

He came to the edge of the bank, so I checked for traffic and pulled in all the way, lifting my left oar so I could glide in on a tilt.

‘I’ve been looking out for you down here,’ Kit said, coming to crouch next to me. ‘Towpath is my favourite run.’

He didn’t seem to have a problem with admitting he’d been checking up on me, but maybe that was the point. To make sure I knew he was keeping an eye out.

I thought of those photographs, and I shivered. Though when his eyes went to my very bruised leg I saw them widen. Was he really surprised? Or had he wanted to see exactly how much he’d hurt me?

‘Nobody should have a favourite run,’ I told him, doing my best to pretend I hadn’t noticed. ‘Running is insanity.’

Kit shook his head. ‘I know, but they won’t let me have a boat on the rugby pitch, so…’

I had to give him that.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked, nodding towards the water. ‘That looks painful.’

‘Oh, it’s not as bad as it looks,’ I said. ‘Drivers around here really need to work out the size of their vehicles.’

‘You got run into?’ he asked with what seemed like simple concern.

‘Yup! I was properly in the right place in the bike box, too. But they were in a hurry and didn’t see me.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s OK, I’m still getting the miles in.’

And then two things occurred to me: the first was that Kit was a sportsman and would probably recognise only too easily the signs of someone who was having a crisis of self-confidence.

The second one was that I didn’t have to lie about how I was feeling and it would be nice to just be able to tell one of these guys the truth, even if he had come to revel in my injured state.

So I let out a long breath and said, ‘Actually, I’m having a crappy time of it.

I didn’t sleep well because my leg hurt and so I was off my game from the start, and I’ve been steering like a total moron, and kind of lost all belief that I’m good enough to even sit in this boat, never mind achieve what I want to. ’

I gave a shaky laugh and leaned down to pick up my water bottle from beneath my feet.

‘Ahh, sorry,’ Kit said, and despite listening for any delight, I heard nothing but sympathy in his tone. Though sympathy wasn’t really what I wanted right then, either. ‘I’m… I have a lot of days like that.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I said, in what was, to be honest, a snappy voice.

Kit laughed. ‘Don’t buy into my positivity bullshit.

A lot of it’s about trying to convince myself.

’ I looked up at him, wondering whether this was an effort to manipulate or the honest truth.

‘I have to work pretty hard not to have my dad’s voice in my head.

And it’s worst if I take a knock during a game. ’

‘Oh.’ I took a chug of the water, considering this. ‘I kind of figured your parents were the nice kind.’

‘Dad’s not the worst,’ Kit said. ‘He just comes from the school of “you have to push kids to get them to achieve their potential”. So he’s spent a lot of my life telling me what I’m doing isn’t good enough, which…

It doesn’t help, actually.’ He half straightened from his crouched position but, instead of leaving, he sat himself down properly on the bank.

‘But I have ways of shutting it out.’ He nodded at the blades.

‘It’s probably the same as what you do. I have little ritual movements that make me feel Zen, like crossing my arms onto my shoulders and breathing.

Doesn’t matter if anyone thinks I’m a prick, I do it anyway.

’ He gave me a lopsided smile. ‘And I ignore the pressure or what I feel I should be achieving and focus in on one tiny thing. Like dropping my shoulder an inch further on a tackle. Or being a fraction more on my toes in the sprint. It stops anything else getting in, like beating myself up about a bad pass or anything.’

I looked out at the water, thinking that beating myself up is actually one of my default states.

I’d definitely been doing it over the rowing.

And over Cordelia, too. Telling myself over and over that I shouldn’t have overshared with her.

That I’d been unprofessional. That I was messing everything up.

Kit’s style of doing things sounded so much… kinder on himself. Not letting in the self-laceration, or the rage, or the guilt.

‘I get told I shouldn’t dwell on things a lot,’ I said with a laugh. ‘By coaches and academic supervisors. But I guess I haven’t really developed any methods for not doing it.’

‘Maybe it’s worth finding a movement that makes you feel calm,’ he said. ‘Something that lets you feel like you’re washing all the anger away. And then going from there.’ Kit shrugged. ‘But this is just me talking. I’m not a sports psychologist.’

‘Oh, I’ve seen plenty of those,’ I said. I looked out at the water and found myself thinking suddenly of Tanya. Of how she used to smooth her headband just before a match. How totally calm she’d looked doing it.

Weirdly, ritual movements had never occurred to me as something that might help me. I mean, I obviously fiddle with my nails or my hair or whatever’s around all the time, but I don’t have anything particularly conscious.

‘I might give it a try.’

I closed my eyes and put my hands up to where one of Tanya’s bright blue headbands would have been, up on the centre of my forehead.

I should have felt stupid, doing it in front of Kit, but picturing Tanya, it actually felt almost like she was touching my head.

Like it was her hands moving over my skin and hair, and brushing everything away.

And it was the strangest thing. It was like all the anger and self-loathing just slid away with them.

I blinked my eyes open and looked up at Kit with genuine surprise.

‘OK, I think I see the point.’

‘It’s awesome, isn’t it?’ he said, his expression full of delight.

When he took my blade and pushed me back out into the river it was a whole new me who began rowing again. A me who was able to zone in on the feel of the water and the connection of the catch and wasn’t worried about the pain in my leg or whether I was about to get fired.

Kit ended up running back alongside the boat, beaming at my enjoyment. And I think, also, enjoying that I was grateful to him.

It was some great sports psychology, Reid, and a genuinely enjoyable row home. But after I’d got back and Kit had watched me lifting my boat out and onto the racks he said something else. Something that made it all… less good.

It was as I was sliding the rack away, and he’d been telling me to come to King’s Bar again that night to keep him and Ryan company.

‘Esther’ll be locked away working for her second exam,’ he added.

‘Oh,’ I said, walking to pick my blades up from the hard. ‘I could maybe come. I mean, I probably should be working… but…’

Kit gave me a grin, trailing alongside me. ‘You definitely need to come. Guilt-free living starts here.’

I laughed at him. ‘I think some of the guilt is probably reasonable.’

‘I honestly think guilt is one of the least healthy emotions in the world,’ Kit said, more seriously.

‘All those parents who use it all the time… It’s honestly abusive.

I mean, sure. Learn from your mistakes. Think “I could have done that better”.

But don’t torture yourself. It doesn’t help anyone. ’

It was so compelling, the way he said it. For a moment, I actually believed he might be right. Why was guilt necessary? All it meant was making yourself miserable instead of learning and moving on.

It was only after he’d gone that I started to remember that there were things people genuinely should feel guilty about and try to make amends for. Really terrible things.

And I wondered whether Kit would be able to do the worst things and just put them behind him. Because it sounded to me like he would.