The cover story took until six-fifteen and survived about forty minutes.

They built it in the Thornquist kitchen over cold coffee, Junie typing, Sel pacing in a dressing gown the colour of a bruise, Dilly at the table with the laundry receipt in front of her and the rain-jacket photograph on her phone. The rules were simple. A lie that has to hold up under a hostile uncle must be mostly true. So: they had known each other eight months. Dilly had consulted privately on Sel's security after the Ventura clip, quietly, because he was a man who watched the footage and thought: I would hire her. Nobody had known because Sel did not do things publicly until they were finished. He had gone to the laundromat last night to propose.

"In the middle of a flood?" said Junie, delighted. "At midnight? That's insane. That's so insane it's believable. Nobody could make that up."

"Several people just have," said Dilly.

"And the ring?"

Sel looked stricken. "I did not bring a ring."

"You walked in with a bridal speech and no ring."

"I walked in with a will and a proposal. The ring was a procedural question I'd deferred."

Junie put her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. "He deferred the ring," she said into her palms. "Oh my god. I'm going to get that on a mug."

The house had found its pulse by then. Staff Dilly had not met drifted through the hall in the grey light, a cook, a woman with a clipboard, two gardeners standing at the window not working. Everyone had the carefully blank look of a household in which a funeral is coming and something worse is coming first. She had put Pascual on the front gate and made a list of the three keys she did not like. She had not slept, which was normal, and had found that she did not want to, which was not.

At seven the bell rang.

"That will be my uncle," Sel said, and a small tremor went across the surface of his face and was put away. "He always arrives at seven. He says it shows respect for the working day."

"Does he have a key?"

"He has an excellent smile. It works better than a key."

Maurice Thornquist came into the kitchen holding a white bakery box in both hands, like an offering, with his coat over his arm and a younger man in a quiet suit trailing behind him with a leather medical bag. He was sixty-one, round-shouldered, ruddy, with a warm gap-toothed grin and the sort of white hair that made children want to sit on his knee. He set the box down. He opened it. The smell of cardamom buns filled the room.

"Sel," he said. "Son. I'm so sorry." And he crossed the kitchen and hugged his nephew with a closeness that went on a beat longer than a hug should, one hand patting the shoulder blade, two, three, the way a man feels a horse's flank. Dilly watched Sel's eyes close. Watched him stand through it. "I came the second I heard. And this must be Dilnoza. May I? Oh, don't get up, dear. Mo. Everybody calls me Mo."

"Mr. Thornquist," Dilly said, and stood up anyway.

"What a firm hand. You've got a firm hand! Odessa would've liked that. She liked firm." He kept hold of hers a second, his thumb resting a little too casually on her pulse. "I hope you slept. I hope somebody slept. Last night must have been a rough one, with the photograph and all. Nobody should have to see their family on that app. I told my girl, I said, delete it, take it down, I don't care who posted it. It's not right."

"That's kind," said Sel.

"It's family. Now, I brought Dr. Aaberg, don't be cross. He's the best cardiologist in the county. Just a quick look. Nothing formal. Nobody's saying anything. We only want you well."

The young man with the bag smiled apologetically and did not meet anyone's eye.

"No," said Dilly.

Maurice turned. His face showed sweet, genuine surprise. "I'm sorry, dear?"

"He's not seeing a doctor today. He's had a bad night and a worse afternoon and he's burying his grandmother. Whatever Dr. Aaberg is writing in that bag, it won't be written this morning."

"Well," Maurice said, and looked at Sel, and back, and laughed. It was a warm, delighted laugh, that of a man finding that his nephew had acquired a mastiff. "Well! She's protective. I like that. Is that how it was, then? You two? Eight months, Junie tells me. Eight months, and I never knew."

Junie, who had been standing against the fridge trying to be furniture, made a small noise.

"I didn't say eight months," she said.

"It's on the group chat, sweetheart. Murmur. 'Sel & Dilly, the long game.' Someone's already made a hashtag." He took a bun from the box, unhurried, and bit into it. "Charming. And you, Dilnoza, you were doing what? Consulting? Security, that's right. Which firm?"

She had the answer. She had made the answer an hour ago, with a name and a company and a fake invoice. She opened her mouth to say it and Maurice added, smiling, mild as milk, "Because I rang Calloway & Pryce this morning, you see. The people who handled the Ventura contract. Lovely woman in the front office. She said you left the firm in disgrace, of course, no one could have kept you on, but she had no record of any private work. None. She was quite firm. I thought, that's odd."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"It was off the books," said Dilly.

"Was it."

"I didn't invoice. He paid cash."

"Cash. Dear heavens." Maurice looked at his nephew with enormous tenderness. "Sel, you paid a woman cash in a bag, for months, and kept it a secret from your own family?"

"I did," said Sel evenly. "Yes. I kept a great deal from my own family. I've found that it saves time."

It was a very good line, and he delivered it flat, and Dilly saw it land. Maurice's smile did not move. Something behind it did. For one moment he looked, not angry, but affronted, as a man looks when the dog he has been petting takes a bite and then tilts its head to see how he will take it.

Then the smile resettled.

"Well," he said gently. "I understand. A man's allowed his private life. And the poor girl's had such a time of it. Fourteen months of all that nonsense on the internet. Hasn't she? And now this. From one rough landing to another." He patted Dilly's arm. "I only hope you know what you're signing, dear."

"I haven't signed anything."

"No, no. Of course not. Not yet. The courthouse is Friday, I expect, isn't it, or Monday? Sel's always so punctual. And the contract after." He finished the bun and licked a crumb off his thumb. "A year, is it? A year, and your mother's loan gone. Very generous. I'd have offered more, myself. You're worth more than a laundromat, dear."

Nobody moved.

Somewhere in the house a clock struck the quarter. Junie's face had gone entirely blank. Sel's hand, resting on the back of a chair, was very, very still.

The contract had been drafted at four that morning by Sel's attorney, Eun-ji Paredes, in the back of a car, from instructions given in a wet laundromat to four people and a brother. It had been printed once. It was in the sideboard, in the drawer, with a lock. Dilly had checked the lock herself at six, and had been proud of the way it clicked.

"Who told you about the loan?" she said.

"Oh, it's the town, dear. Everybody talks." Maurice picked up his coat. His eyes were soft and wet and sympathetic and utterly unhurried. "Think about the offer, though, will you? Both of you. Ardent is a sound company. And they're good with people like you, Dilnoza. People who've been misjudged. We could do a lot for you." He turned. "Sel. The funeral is Thursday at eleven. Do come looking well. For her sake. And look after the girl, will you? She's got her whole family behind her, I hear. I'd hate for anyone to get hurt."

He gave Dr. Aaberg a nod, and the two of them went out, and the front door closed with a soft heavy click, as expensive doors do.

Nobody spoke. Junie let out a breath she must have been holding since the word loan.

"He's a lot," she whispered.

"He called Calloway & Pryce," said Dilly. "He had a number for me ready. He knew the fake invoice wouldn't be there, he didn't need to check." She was already moving, taking out her phone, her mind snapping into the hard bright shape it had always taken at work. "The thing about the loan. Who in this room knew the terms before they were written?"

"No one," said Sel faintly. "Eun-ji. Margit. The four of us in the laundromat."

"And Pascual, in the car. And Junie, in the car, when we drove here. And whoever has been listening in that car, or on the phone you left in the cup holder, or in the sideboard drawer I thought was locked." She turned to the sideboard, put her hand on the drawer, and pulled.

It slid open without a sound.

The lock was intact. It had not been forced, or picked, or cut. Someone had simply opened it with a key. Inside, the contract lay exactly where she had left it. The cover page had a faint smudge in one corner, a dark thumbprint that was not hers.

"Eight people in this house have a key to that lock," said Sel, very quietly. "I know all eight. I would have staked my life on seven."

Dilly took a breath. Then she did the one thing that, fourteen months ago, she could not have done. She did not wait to be told what to do. She pulled the drawer completely out, set it down on the table, and looked at the thumbprint in the grey morning light.

"All right," she said. "Then we start with the eighth."