The door swung open, and there she was — apologizing before I could even get a word out. The place was a mess, she said, still recovering from dinner. Cheese on toast. She was half-talking, half-moving, already on to the next thing — throwing a load of laundry in, barely pausing to breathe. I told her it was fine, that we just needed a word with Todd.

She knew the drill. “I’ll get out of your hair,” she said, already reaching for her keys. The dry cleaners. Did I need anything picked up? No. And just like that, she was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.

So we sat down. Todd across from me, waiting. Whatever he expected me to say, it wasn’t this.

“Theo’s death,” I said, letting the words land, “is now a murder investigation.”

He didn’t react the way I thought he would. Before he could answer, the door flew open again. Her. Back. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, locking eyes with me. “Talking,” I said.

Then the boy appeared — Todd’s son — standing in the doorway like he’d been caught in the crossfire of a war that started long before he was born. “He needs to be at school,” she said. Todd shot back, “We were discussing.” The kid muttered, “I’m going,” and disappeared, but the damage was done. “Love you, baby,” Todd called after him, the warmth in his voice a stark contrast to what was coming.

“We were discussing him coming away with me,” Todd said.

That’s when she lit the fuse.

“He’s going nowhere.”

And there it was — the old wound, ripped open again. “Oh, you go digging your heels in again,” Todd fired back. “Melanie, what are you talking about?”

“This is what you do. This is what you’ve always done. It’s always my way or nothing. Can you ever think about what’s best for anyone else?”

“I don’t? You’re the self-centered one. He needs his mom.”

“There are things going on that you don’t know about. Things I need to get him through.”

“Yeah, whatever. What things? Things like what? Tell me. Tell me.”

The entire pub could hear them now — the shouting rattling the walls. And then she dropped it. The grenade.

“She’s had an abortion.”

The room went cold. “Megan had an abortion,” she said, quieter this time, as if hearing it aloud made it real for her too. Megan — the girl who was going to have his baby. Todd’s son’s baby. The reason the boy needed his parents. The reason he needed to stay.

“No,” Todd said, his voice hardening. “He needs to be far away from you. You failed him.”

The fight escalated, their voices climbing over each other, a spiral of accusation and pain. “You are not going to take him away from his family!” “I’m his mom!” “What’s in the blue moon?” “Will you stop shouting? You just need to sit down like adults and talk!”

“She’s not capable,” Todd said.

“Ben —” she started.

“I’m going for a walk.”

“Ben —”

“GO AWAY.”

And then he was gone. She stood there, the silence hanging where his anger had been. “Just please can we just talk? Please.”

---

But that wasn’t the end of it. Not for me.

I came back to her later — same house, same tension in the air — and walked her through that night again. The night Theo died.

“Apologies to go over this,” I said, “but you say you were at number 11 Carnation Street.”

“That’s right. Yes.”

“And you booked a flight to Thailand.”

“My mom and my brother are out there. Yes.”

“Okay. Now, you called a taxi to take you to the airport.”

“Correct.”

“But the taxi came, and you didn’t go.”

She shifted in her seat. “I was in the taxi when I realized I didn’t have my phone.”

“So you abandoned your plan to get away from Theo because you didn’t have your phone.”

“I couldn’t do anything without it. He had my ticket, emails — everything.”

“Okay. So you went back to look for it?”

She hesitated. “Where?”

“I was going to go back to the flat, but — that’s when I saw Theo.”

The question came like a blade. “So did you run back to your taxi?”

She held my gaze. “You know that I didn’t. I ran towards the precinct and I hid.”

“And that was the last time you say you saw Theo alive