"So, Miss Albaferrari, you say you didn't come near Daylesford Hall between Friday evening and Monday afternoon?" the older of the two policemen interviewing me asked.

I didn't bother to correct him on my name. I'd already spelled it out for him twice, so I'd come to the conclusion it was a lost cause.

"That's right. I finished at around ten p.m. on Friday, and when I came in on Monday, your people were just carrying Helene's body out."

"And what were you doing on Sunday evening between the hours of seven and eleven?"

"I was on a date."

He raised an eyebrow. "A date?"

Was it really that hard to believe? "Yes, a double date with my friend Shannon."

Of course, she'd arranged it. The closest I got to chatting up a guy was smiling at the boy behind the supermarket deli counter in the hope he'd be generous with the portions.

At least the younger policeman didn't share his colleague's surprise. No, he fixed me with a hard stare and tapped a blue biro on his notepad. I noticed he'd chewed the cap.

"We'll need the details of your date. A man?"

Martha's question about the cop's sexual orientation popped into my head. Why did she suspect he might be gay? I mentally catalogued the details—light-brown hair, cropped short; matching eyes with flecks of grey; a thin nose with a little bump at the end; a jaw slightly too angular to be attractive. To me, anyway. It obviously hadn't bothered Martha. And from what I could see as his shirt stretched across his chest when he leaned towards me, he probably spent some time in the gym.

"The details of your date, Miss Algafari?"

"What? Oh, yes. It was with a man."

"Can you give us his name?"

His name... His name... Joe? John? Jim? "It began with J. I think. Try Jason?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

Okay, now I sounded like a complete ditz, although perhaps that wasn't so bad under the circumstances. Better for them to think I was stupid than figure out the truth.

"Uh, I can't quite remember. My friend arranged it through one of those dating websites."

In truth, after he'd leered down my top before we'd even spoken, I'd mentally filed him in the "nope" pile. Then when his hand landed on my thigh halfway through the starter, I'd peeled his fingers away and moved him from "nope" to "not even if the survival of the human race depended on it." And when he'd tried it a second time, I'd been forced to sit on my hands so I didn't pin his fingers to the table with my fork.

Shannon's companion hadn't been much better. They rarely were. Aisling's father had been a rat of the first order, a wealthy businessman named Richard Albernarle III who'd abandoned her when she discovered she was expecting Aisling and hid behind his lawyers to avoid paying child support, mainly in case the wife he'd conveniently forgotten to mention to Shannon found out. I'd christened him Slick Dick. Worse, Shannon had confided in him that she'd run from her ex in Ireland, and gentleman that he was, Dick had threatened to tell the ex where Shannon was if she breathed a word about Aisling's parentage.

And his parting shot? Shannon would never be worth more than a quick roll in the sack.

I'd have thought that would have been enough to put Shannon off men for life, but instead, she'd gone in the other direction, determined to prove Dick wrong by meeting her perfect man. Mr. Average, she said. Somebody more in her league.

But so far, she'd only managed to attract players and fruitcakes. She did get as far as the fourth date with one guy, but the second she mentioned her daughter, he ran for the hills.

And Sunday had been more of the same. Her date and Joe-John-Jason had obviously been interested in only one thing, which neither Shannon nor I were willing to give. Well, Shannon had a brief wobble after the idiots poured her three glasses of wine, but I'd excused us to go to the bathroom and shoved her out the front door and into a taxi instead. That was the reason I went on those double dates with her—to save her from herself.

But I wasn't about to explain our history to the cop sitting opposite me.

"I'll need your friend's details so we can get his information," he said.

"It didn't go very well, so she deleted all the messages. Can't you check with the restaurant? We went to Pizza Express on the high street. They might have a CCTV camera or something." No "might" about it—the camera to the right of the front door would have caught us arriving and leaving, and even though I'd ducked my head out of habit, they should still have enough evidence to provide me with an alibi. "I was wearing black jeans and a red jumper," I added, just in case.

He huffed, no doubt at the thought of having to do some extra work, but jotted the details down in his notepad.

"How well did you know Ms. Weston?" he asked.

"Not at all, not really. I said hello to her in the hallway once or twice, and occasionally she asked me to skip cleaning her office if she was still working. I doubt she even knew my name. I'm only the cleaner."

"Have you seen any strangers hanging around?"

"Nobody."

"Delivery men? Visitors who looked out of place?"

"Sometimes the postman comes to pick up the mail when I'm here, but it's always the same man. White hair, in his fifties, wears shorts whatever the weather. And there are often visitors, but nobody that gave me the creeps. I think Martha makes everyone sign the visitors' book when they arrive."

"We're aware of that."

Silence. They were trying to make me feel uncomfortable. Amateurs. I'd once spent a week being tortured with water and knives and electricity back in Syria—a little peace and quiet barely blipped my radar.

Finally, the older cop spoke. "Well, Miss Aldehari, I think that's all for now. Keep your wits about you when you're here late at night, and if anything makes you uncomfortable, I'd suggest you ring 999 straight away."

I nodded, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically. "I'll make sure of that."

The other cop slid a business card across the table towards me. Chris Turner, Detective Constable. "And if you think of anything else, here's my number. Thank you for your time."

I stuffed the card into my pocket and rose from my seat. Stay calm, Rania. My feet wanted to run, but I forced them to take slow, measured steps until I got into the corridor. The police had borrowed one of the second-floor meeting rooms to do the interviews in, so I slunk away until I reached the cleaning supplies cupboard. Once inside, I retrieved my knife from behind a bottle of bleach and tucked it back in my pocket.

The most difficult part of the day was over. Now I just had to finish the cleaning and deal with Arthur and Helene before I could go home.

***

The rest of the week passed without incident, and according to Martha, the police were no further forward with their investigation. At least I hadn't been called in for more questioning—the CCTV tape from Pizza Express must have checked out okay.

Oh, and Martha had asked Chris the cop out, and he'd turned her down, so he must definitely be gay, she said.

Arthur remained tight-lipped but grumpy, and Helene's daily whining had turned into more of a sulk. I suspected she'd practised that pout in the mirror. Every day. For years.

Martha told me Mr. Weston had returned to work for a day before breaking down in the corridor where his daughter died. I thought Helene might try to use that to make me feel guilty, but evidently his tears hadn't been loud enough for her to hear, and she couldn't sense her father's presence and emotions in the same way as she could mine. Even now, I was still learning new things about spirits.

"Work going better?" Shannon asked on Friday evening.

"Yes, it is."

"But the police haven't caught that maniac yet?"

"Not yet."

"I'm still worried about you going to that place alone at night."

"I know, and I'm grateful for that, but I could get run over crossing the road."

"Don't say that." She crinkled her nose in that adorable way she had, reminding me why men like Dick lusted after her. "Did you see that story on the news about the girl who got a firework put through her letter box? She accidentally ended up in the middle of some sort of turf war."

"Near here?"

"The other side of town." Shannon's phone buzzed, and she smiled as she read the screen. "Ooh, I've got us dates for this weekend! Good ones this time, I promise. Lisa said she'd look after Aisling again."

Lisa was the seventeen-year-old daughter of one of Shannon's colleagues. Blessed with four younger brothers and two sisters, she'd babysit once a week for pennies as long as we supplied her with plenty of ice cream and somewhere quiet to study. Unfortunately.

"Do we have to go?"

"Come on, Rania. You'll never meet the One sitting at home with a book."

"But I don't want to meet anybody. I'm better off by myself."

"And yet you've never told me why you're so anti-men." Her brow furrowed for a second. "There's this new lesbian dating app..."

"No! I don't want to meet anybody, male or female."

"Fine. Be a spinster your whole life." She tilted her head to one side and gave me a lopsided smile. "But you'll come on Saturday, right? It's just a bit of fun. You don't have to marry the guy."

"I promised Mrs. Garrett downstairs that I'd do her shopping in the afternoon." She couldn't walk so well anymore, and I'd started helping her after she tripped over the steps with her wheeled trolley a few months ago.

"I won't arrange anything too early. Please?"

When the alternative was worrying about Shannon all night? I sighed. "Yes, I'll come."