Alex and Chloe sat at the kitchen table drinking tea. They should both have gone to bed by now, but it seemed they had worked their way past the point of tiredness. It was a state with which Alex was becoming increasingly familiar.

‘Let me know if you need any help with this,’ Chloe said, gesturing to the pile of papers sitting by the microwave. They were all to do with arrangements for Gillian’s funeral. Once the death certificate was issued, Alex would be assaulted with a barrage of decisions she didn’t want to have to face. She would have to read through the endless documents that awaited her and make contact with the funeral home, but despite having known for months that its arrival would be imminent, a funeral was still something she felt unprepared for.

‘Thanks. I think I’m on top of things,’ she lied. ‘Look … I know you think my reaction to all this has been a bit weird.’

‘I don’t think anything,’ Chloe said, sipping her tea.

Alex raised an eyebrow. ‘We didn’t have the best relationship. We hadn’t for a long time. And when you’ve watched someone dying for as long as I did … I don’t know. It changes your response to it.’

‘I get that,’ Chloe told her. ‘She’s not suffering any more. That’s a good thing.’

Alex stared at her tea, not sure why she’d bothered to make it. She didn’t really like the taste. Like so many other things, it had become a mindless habit. ‘There’s something I want to tell you. I think I owe it to you – things will probably make a bit more sense. Years ago, about six years back, I had a miscarriage.’

Chloe’s face fell. ‘God, Alex, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise … I thought you …’

‘It’s fine,’ Alex told her, feeling guilty now for having made her so clearly uncomfortable. ‘I mean, it happens a lot. It happens all the time. Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this is more to do with what happened afterwards. My mother was quick to tell me I’d been too old to try and that my body probably couldn’t handle it – that I should have thought about it sooner. I was fourteen weeks when it happened, so I needed a D and C.’

Chloe looked at her blankly.

‘It’s a procedure where … Don’t worry about what it is. The point is, when we got back from the hospital – and I’ll never forget it as long as I live – my mother stood there in the doorway of the living room and told me that it wasn’t a proper baby anyway.’

‘She actually said that?’

Alex nodded. ‘I thought years later, you know, after the dementia diagnosis, that maybe it wasn’t really her speaking. Maybe the illness had already taken a grip by then and she didn’t have a hold over the things that were coming out of her mouth. But other times I don’t think so … I think it was just her. Anyway, it was a proper baby – that’s the point I’m making. When you’ve had IVF, you get an early scan. We saw a heartbeat at less than eight weeks, this little pulsing on the screen. And that’s all I could think about when Keira North’s post-mortem came back … that two lives had been lost.’

---

Chloe sat back in her chair and looked away for a moment. Things made so much more sense now. Alex had reacted almost personally to Keira’s death; so much more so when the superintendent had suggested that it should be deemed an accident. This went a long way towards explaining that reaction, although Chloe knew that Alex’s desire for justice would have been just as strong had Keira not been pregnant.

‘Harry knows about this, doesn’t he?’ she asked.

Alex nodded. ‘But he’s the only person at the station who does. No one else knew about it at the time.’

Chloe stared at the surface of her untouched tea, unsure of what to say. ‘Do you think Leah’s telling the truth? About Isobel driving that car?’

‘I don’t know. It makes sense, though, and it works alongside your theory – that someone pushed Keira thinking she was Leah. If Isobel had made the same assumption as us and thought that Leah was having an affair with her father, then perhaps it all adds up. She went to that party knowing she’d find Leah there, thought she’d found her and just reacted on impulse. It’s tragic.’

‘It’s even more tragic – if you’re right – when you think about how wrong she got it. Same as we did.’

Alex nodded. ‘Look, Chloe, there’s another reason why I’ve told you all this, and believe me, it’s been awkward as hell and I’d appreciate it if we never mention this conversation again, OK? After the miscarriage, Rob and I never tried again. We just couldn’t get past what it had done to us, and I never really got over the things my mother had said. I was thirty-eight years old and I let her treat me as though I was still thirteen. I kept that nagging voice in my head and it never switched off and I let it beat me.’ She paused. ‘I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that you can’t let other people dictate your life. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, while the chance is there.’

She stood and went to one of the kitchen drawers, opening it to retrieve a brochure. Chloe’s cheeks coloured as Alex put it on the table in front of her.

‘Don’t let anyone or anything keep you from doing what’s best for you.’

The brochure was one Chloe had picked up from an estate agent’s a couple of weeks earlier. It advertised rental properties in South Wales. She had been thinking for a while that Alex needed her home back, her own space, and the longer she stayed there, the harder it was going to be for her to regain her independence.

‘How did you …’

‘I heard you talking with Scott a couple of weeks back,’ Alex admitted. ‘I wasn’t eavesdropping, I promise. I popped back here for something and I just overheard.’

Chloe closed her eyes for a moment, worried how much Alex had heard. She and Scott had talked about her plans to move, but events of the past couple of weeks had changed everything. She couldn’t leave Alex now. She hoped Alex hadn’t heard her talking about just how vulnerable she believed the older woman to be.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘What are you apologising for? Look, I appreciate you thinking of me and it’s kind of you and everything, but there’s such a thing as being too kind sometimes. When I asked you to stay here, it was about getting you back on your feet and away from that flat, and now those things are done, I don’t expect you to stay here drinking crap tea with me every evening, watching life pass by without you.’

Chloe nodded, the colour in her cheeks fading. ‘I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me; you know that, don’t you?’

Alex nodded.

‘Do you think it’s too soon?’

‘Do you?’

‘It feels like the right time.’

Alex smiled. ‘Then you’ve answered your own question. Right,’ she said, standing from the table and taking her unfinished tea to the sink. ‘We should get some sleep or we’ll be good for nothing tomorrow.’ She rinsed out her cup and stood it upside down on the draining board. ‘See you in the morning.’