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pass. ‘You might as well go,’ I say to Sam K, as soon as I’m able to speak. ‘You obviously don’t believe me, so why should we both waste our time?’
    He looks at me thoughtfully. ‘What makes you think I don’t believe you?’
    ‘I might be delusional but I’m not stupid,’ I snap at him. ‘You’re sitting there eating biscuits, chatting about wheelie bins and interior décor . . .’
    ‘It helps me to find out a little about you and Kit.’ He’s unruffled by my outburst. ‘I want to know who you are as well as what you saw.’
    The holistic approach . Alice would be on his side.
    ‘I saw nothing.’ Kit shrugs.
    ‘That’s not true,’ I tell him. ‘You didn’t see nothing – you saw a lounge with no woman’s body in it. That’s not nothing.’
    ‘Why a property website, Connie?’ Sam K asks again. ‘Why Cambridge?’
    ‘A few years ago we thought about moving there,’ I say, unable to look him in the eye. ‘We decided not to, but . . . sometimes I still think about it, and . . . I don’t know, it was a spur of the moment thing – there was no particular reason behind it. I look up all sorts of strange things on the internet when I’m restless and can’t sleep.’
    ‘So, last night, you logged onto Roundthehouses and . . . what? Talk me through it, step by step.’
    ‘I searched for properties for sale in Cambridge, saw 11 Bentley Grove, called up the details . . .’
    ‘Did you look at any other houses?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not? What made you pick 11 Bentley Grove?’
    ‘I don’t know. It was third on the list that came up. I liked the look of it, so I clicked on it.’ I sit down again. ‘First I looked at the photographs of the rooms, and then I saw there was a virtual tour, so I thought I might as well have a look at that too.’
    Kit reaches over and squeezes my hand.
    ‘How much was it on for?’ Sam K asks.
    Why does he want to know that? ‘1.2 million.’
    ‘Would that be affordable for you?’
    ‘No. Not even close,’ I say.
    ‘So you have no plans to move to Cambridge, and 11 Bentley Grove would be out of reach price-wise, but you were still interested enough to take the virtual tour, even after you’d looked at the photographs?’
    ‘You must know what it’s like.’ I try not to sound defensive. ‘You find yourself clicking on one thing after another. Not for any good reason, just . . .’
    ‘She was wilfing,’ Kit tells Sam K. ‘Wilf as in “What was I Looking For?” – aimless web-surfing. I do it all the time, when I should be working.’ He’s covering for me. Does he expect me to be grateful for his support? It’s his fault that I’ve had to make up a story. I’m not the liar here .
    ‘All right,’ says Sam K. ‘So you took the virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove.’
    ‘The kitchen came up first. The picture kept turning – it made my eyes feel tired, so I closed them, and then when I opened them I saw all this . . . red. I realised I was looking at the lounge, and there was a woman’s body—’
    ‘How did you know it was the lounge?’ Sam K cuts me off.
    I don’t mind the interruption. It calms me, pulls me out of the horror that’s still so vivid in my mind, and back into the present. ‘I’d seen it in one of the photographs – it was the same room.’ Haven’t I just told him I looked at the photographs first? Is he trying to catch me out?
    ‘But there was no woman’s body and no blood in the photograph, correct?’
    I nod.
    ‘Let’s leave aside the blood and the body for a second. In every other respect, the virtual tour’s lounge was the same as the lounge in the photograph, yes?’
    ‘Yes. I’m almost sure. I mean, I’m as sure as I can be.’
    ‘Describe it.’
    ‘What’s the point?’ I ask, frustrated. ‘You can log onto Roundthehouses and see it for yourself. Why don’t you ask me to describe the woman?’
    ‘I know this is hard for you, Connie, but you have to trust that anything I ask, it’s for a good