Alex indicated and pulled the car on to the slip road. This stretch of the A470 – a concrete link between Cardiff and Brecon that got greyer the nearer it drew towards the city – often felt like a kind of second home. She had driven it so often that she was now able to navigate her route without paying attention to the road, her thoughts often snared by work. That evening, it wasn’t the job that was keeping her mind preoccupied.

Chloe was sitting beside her in the passenger seat, her frustration still obvious. She was playing distractedly with an elastic band, stretching it between her fingers in a form of ineffectual stress therapy. ‘We let him go,’ she said, stating the fact as though still struggling to comprehend it. It wasn’t the outcome any of them had expected, Alex included. Not a couple of hours earlier, at least.

She had her reasons.

‘We’ve got bloody proof he was in the area that night,’ Chloe said, winding the elastic band around her thumb until the circulation was cut off and the tip turned white. ‘He had no other reason to be there. And we let him go.’

Alex pressed her foot further to the accelerator, speeding up the journey home. She was keen to get back to the house and have a shower, feeling as though she hadn’t been home in days. She understood Chloe’s frustrations, but for now all she wanted was to stand beneath a powerful stream of hot water, drink a cup of tea and fall into bed. Tomorrow she would explain everything to the team.

Chloe had started to say something else, undeterred by Alex’s lack of response. She was interrupted by the ringing of Alex’s mobile through the Bluetooth system, and though Alex was initially grateful for the distraction, her reaction altered when she saw the number. This was a conversation she would have preferred to keep from Chloe, but the speaker meant she would hear everything. She could have left it until they got to the house and called back then, but she didn’t want to chance it.

‘You might want to come up,’ the nurse told her. ‘I’m so sorry … it won’t be long now.’

Alex felt her grip on the steering wheel tighten. She hadn’t wanted it to end this way, in an alien room surrounded by institutional furniture and blank walls. She had wanted her mother to be at home, where she would have wanted to be. It seemed only right – the last decent thing she could do for her amid a host of forced decisions that she’d never wanted to have to take – yet she wasn’t entirely sure where ‘home’ might be. To her mother, it would have meant the house in which she’d shared the majority of her adult life with Alex’s father; not Alex’s house, to which she had moved reluctantly, still refusing to accept it wasn’t safe for her to continue to manage alone.

Chloe looked at Alex questioningly as she ended the call. She’d stopped playing with the elastic band and shoved it into her pocket.

‘I’ll drop you home and go straight up,’ Alex said.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Chloe told her.

‘No, I—’

‘You shouldn’t be on your own, not now. I won’t come in with you … I’ll wait in the car. But you should have someone there with you.’

Alex headed off the roundabout at the first exit and drove up Nantgarw Hill towards Caerphilly. ‘I appreciate it,’ she said, keeping her eyes fixed to the road ahead, ‘but I really just want to get there. On my own.’

She slowed for the speed camera, pressing her foot back to the accelerator once they’d passed it.

Chloe bit her lip and sat back. ‘If you change your mind, you know where I am. My phone will be on. I’ll stay up.’

‘OK. Thanks. But honestly, there’s no need.’

They made the rest of the journey in silence, passing the places that had once made Alex feel secure but in recent years had come to represent all the things that had kept her trapped. It was strange how a changing life could alter perceptions of things that had remained solid and dependable for years. The crossroads that had once signalled the closeness of home now appeared to be taunting her: Still here? it seemed to ask; an accusation, almost. The church on the corner that stood so tall and grand, once so beautiful, seemed now forbidding, as though it was sitting in judgement on her. The mountain that stood behind her home, once upon a time a kind of silent protector, was now a guard that kept her imprisoned in this town.

They hadn’t changed, Alex realised. She had.

She pulled into her street and drove to the end, stopping outside the house.

‘Stay in touch,’ Chloe said.

Alex nodded. ‘If you really want to help me out,’ she told her, ‘go and get a good night’s rest. I need everyone on top form tomorrow. There’s a reason I opted for police bail for Leighton Matthews. He wasn’t driving that car. He’s covering for someone.’

Chloe looked at her incredulously. ‘What?’

‘I just don’t believe he did it. That’s why I let him go. We could have charged him, but we’d have been charging the wrong person. Think about it – he didn’t really seem to have a clue what time he was supposed to have been there. He couldn’t describe the street, and when I asked him to, he reacted with panic. Who else might have taken that car?’

Chloe’s eyes widened. ‘Melissa.’

‘Exactly. She assumed the same as us – that Leighton was having an affair with Leah. It’s one affair too many, so she takes matters into her own hands. If we’d kept him in custody, he’d have had no contact with her. This way, we get to catch them out. They’re going to try to cover for one another and they’ll slip up somewhere.’

She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. ‘Sorry, Chloe, I really have to go. We’ll speak about this more tomorrow.’