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TEN

SATURDAY 25 JANUARY

The moment dawn breaks, Kate is up, checking every room in the house again, making sure nothing else has been disturbed.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’ Thomas stands on the stairs, watching her.

‘Nothing. Just tidying,’ Kate says, affecting a casual tone, determined to hide her fear and anxiety. She will do whatever it takes to protect her son. But how long will she be able to do that when someone’s been in their house?

He shrugs and doesn’t question her, heading to the kitchen for breakfast.

They sit together at the table, even though Kate can’t stomach any food, and has to force herself to drink the coffee she’d normally relish in the morning. If she didn’t know before, then now it’s clear: someone knows she was with Jamie the night he died. And the fact that they’re not going to the police means there’s something worse they want for her.

Changing the locks is the first thing she needs to do.

The doorbell rings when Kate’s loading the dishwasher after breakfast. Cold fear slivers through her body; after the dead lilies and the tap left running, Kate knows there will be more. Plus it’s been exactly a week since she found Jamie’s body – is this the day the police will come for her?

She rushes to the living room window, but it’s Ellis’s car in the drive, not a police vehicle. With a mixture of relief and confusion, and dread because surely it’s only a matter of time, she heads to the door.

‘Hey,’ Ellis says. Dressed casually in jeans and a dark green hooded top, he leans in as if he’s about to hug her but Kate pulls back. She’s not going there. Any kind of physical contact with Ellis would be dangerous. ‘Everything okay?’ he asks.

‘You’re early.’

‘Is that a problem? I thought you appreciated my punctuality?’

But these are not normal times, and Kate doesn’t have the patience for this. ‘Have you got any keys to this house?’

Ellis frowns. ‘Only the ones I gave back to you. Why?’

‘And you never got another set cut? For Thomas?’

‘No, I’d have told you. What’s going on, Kate?’

‘Nothing. I’ll go and make sure Thomas is getting ready.’

‘It’s still strange coming in here when I don’t live here any more,’ Ellis says. ‘And I’m worried about you. You don’t seem okay.’

Kate turns back, opening her mouth to tell him what’s been going on, but she thinks better of it. Like Rowan, he will tell her to go to the police. ‘I’m fine,’ she says, disappearing upstairs before he can question her further.

At the door, Kate hugs Thomas, clutching him tighter than usual, reluctant to let go. ‘Good luck today,’ she says, as Thomas pulls away.

Ellis pauses and looks back at her. Whatever it is he wants to say, he changes his mind and ushers Thomas outside.

Once they’ve gone, Kate grabs her laptop and sits on the sofa, googling locksmiths. She manages to get someone to come in the afternoon, but the promise of new locks does little to ease her anxiety.

Before shutting down her laptop, Kate googles Jamie Archer again, as she’s done countless times over the last week. There’s still barely any mention of him, and the police haven’t made any arrests. And there’s no mention of him having a wife or son, which leads Kate to believe Jamie when he said he and Harper were separated. Kate’s a good judge of character – she didn’t detect at all that Jamie was lying. In contrast to this, everything Harper says feels laced with lies. And there’s still no trace of Harper online.

Who would want Jamie dead? A disgruntled ex-wife? Kate might have been able to accept and move on from her husband’s affair with dignity, but not everyone can do that.

Kate’s walks to the kitchen to stretch her legs. Standing by the kitchen doors, watching the pattering of rain on the patio, she pulls her phone from her pocket and makes a call she never thought she’d make. A call she doesn’t want to make.

There’s no answer, only a computerised voice telling her the person she’s calling isn’t available. Kate takes a deep breath. ‘It’s me. We need to talk.’

Her heart pounds in her chest as she ends the call. Has she just made a huge mistake?

Just before lunch, Aleena messages, asking if they can meet this afternoon, telling Kate she won’t take no for an answer. Kate politely fobs her off, telling her friend that it’s her weekend with Thomas, and there’s no reply – there is a limit to what Aleena will put up with.

The locksmith arrives and Kate watches him as he works. She feels safer being in the presence of this stranger, someone who has nothing to do with Jamie, or Kate’s past. But while he makes small talk, asking her how she came to lose her keys, she silently urges him to hurry up and finish.

Once he’s handed her two sets of new keys and she shuts the door behind him, relief floods over her. Whoever was in her house last night won’t be able to get in again. She needs to get a burglar alarm. And a doorbell camera. Whatever it takes to protect her home, and her son.

In the kitchen, Kate glances at the calendar to check the week ahead. Her blood runs cold at the sight of the unfamiliar entry marked on Monday’s date:

Jamie’s 36th birthday.