Trish and Rebecca's funerals were on consecutive days, the former in a Catholic church in Harrow, the latter in Reading, where her father lived.

They couldn't have been more different.

Trish's parents made it very clear that the band weren't welcome at hers, and in fact the only attendees in any way connected with Secret Muse were Martin and my brother. Dave returned home late in the afternoon, still soberly dressed in the only suit he owned, barring the fact that he'd clearly got rid of his tie at the first available opportunity. I was in the kitchen, trying to see if I'd completely forgotten how to make shortbread. "Hey, sis. Something smells good. Where's Mum?"

I took another glance at the oven timer. Five minutes. "Melissa took her shopping. How was it?"

He shrugged. "It was a funeral. I don't do funerals."

"Yeah." That I could empathise with. Tomorrow would, in some ways, be Secret Muse's fourth. "I wish I could have gone." I don't know what I'd have said to Trish's parents, but I wanted to... say good-bye, I guess.

He shook his head. "Her dad gave Martin enough of a hard time as it was."

"What about you?"

A shrug. "I don't know. I'm not at all sure they knew we'd split up." He sighed, and went over to the sink to fill the kettle. "I met her mum and dad while you guys were on tour in December. Didn't know anyone else there, barring Martin, and I hardly really know him." A click as the kettle went on. "Was an odd service."

"Odd?"

"Yeah. It..." He fished down two mugs, spooned coffee into both. "The bit where the priest talked about her..."

"The eulogy," I supplied, helpfully.

"Yeah, that. It didn't sound like her." He ladled three sugars into his mug, clicked a couple of sweeteners into mine. "At least... God, I dunno." Dave looked across at me. "It kinda made her out to be this whole 'perfect daughter that had been led astray' thing, and..." Leaning back against the counter, he studied the linoleum for a moment. "Trish's life wasn't a tragedy." He sighed, looked up again. "No, that's not right. It was, but not in the way he was trying to say. It..." A shake of his head. "I know she wasn't perfect. Even before all this. She had a rotten temper sometimes, and... I... guess she kept grudges." The kettle turned itself off in a cloud of steam. "She never did things by halves, though."

I smiled. "No, she didn't."

That won me a faint smile. "She gave me copies of some of the pictures she took of you. They're brilliant."

"Mmm." Two minutes, said the timer, and I sighed. "I just wish I could have got to know her better. She spent... most of the time trying to push me away."

He nodded. "I... You know, the hardest thing used to be getting her to unwind." He poured boiling water into the coffee mugs, handed me mine. "When..." Blowing on his, he took a cautious sip and set it down again. "I guess, thinking about it now... when I could get her to forget I was your brother... she was ... heck, she was almost a different person. It was great to make her laugh, and she had a wicked sense of humour."

"Did you love her?" The question just popped out - it seemed an odd thing to be asking my brother.

There was a pause, and then he smiled at me, sadly. "I'd have given her a second chance. Even now."

I set my mug aside and hugged him, until we interrupted by the ding of the timer.

By contrast, Rebecca's father had specifically asked if we'd perform 'Winter Rose' at her funeral. Even though all the band - as well as Martin, Suzanne, Sarah, and in fact most of Blue Flame's staff - were attending (Greg couldn't, due to a warm-up gig in London), after a bit of discussion we agreed it'd be just Melissa and I. It was a sunny day in mid May, and we arrived a good hour early. The cosy little local church had an organ and a battered old upright piano, whose appearance suggested it was in bad need of some TLC. I ran a hand across the piano keys, and winced; the organist, an older, greying man, caught my eye and smiled. "Sorry. Can't afford to have it tuned this month."

"I brought my own. There somewhere I can plug in?"

He nodded. "Socket behind the piano."

With Darren and Paul's help, I set up the Roland and a small amp, and plugged a microphone in for Melissa. On my knees, taping down cables in a way Dave would have approved of, I was startled by a deep voice from behind me. "Alison?"

The owner of the voice had, without a shadow of a doubt, Rebecca's eyes. Andrew Forrester was tall, silver-haired, startlingly handsome for a man in his fifties. I straightened up, dodging my head on the synth. "You must be her dad." He was, I remembered her saying, director of a high-tech security firm.

He nodded. "Not the kind of venue you're used to nowadays, I guess."

The smile was genuine, and I found myself returning it. "It'll do." I set the reel of tape on top of the amp. "I'm..." What do you say at times like this? "I'm so sorry about Rebecca."

"Thank you. And..." His look took in Melissa, who'd just returned from getting Kev settled in a pew without tripping anyone with his crutches. "I appreciate this, both of you. She always said it was her favourite song of yours."

Melissa fiddled with one of her bracelets. "I... I only hope I can get through it."

Andrew shook his head. "It doesn't matter. We'll understand if you don't."

She found him a faint smile. "It matters to me."

We watched him head over to Kev, wave off his attempt to stand, and sit next to him. "I like him," murmured Melissa.

I watched for a moment, as Kev laughed at something Andrew said. "I think he's very brave." Rebecca hadn't mentioned her mother, but I had noticed Andrew, like my Mum, still wore a wedding ring.

She nodded. "I still hate funerals. If... I... if...." She trailed off, began again. "Don't have one for me..."

I tried to sound light-hearted. "I wasn't planning to anytime soon."

"I'm serious, Ali." Melissa took my hands. "If... if this whole thing isn't over, a...and something happens to me...."

"Stop it." I held one of her hands on both of mine. "It's not going to, OK? I won't let it."

She bit her lip, nodded obediently. "O...OK." A glance over her shoulder towards Andrew and Kev. "We... we should soundcheck before everyone starts coming in."

Rebecca's eulogy was given by her father. I'm not at all ashamed to say that I cried - he had a gift with words, painting a familiar picture of the woman I'd come to consider a friend, that even made us laugh once or twice. That didn't help the tears. Melissa leaned against me, dabbed at her eyes. "And he wants me to sing after that?"

Paul had an arm round Sarah, smiled across at us from the other side of Melissa, and whispered, "You'll do fine."

Andrew cleared his throat. "Rebecca always told me that one of the best things to happened to her was working with Secret Muse. I know that she was loved," he nodded at Kevin, "and that she had friends." A ghost of a smile in Melissa and my direction. "I..." He faltered, for what was the first time. "I also know that it apparently cost her her life, through no fault of her own." One hand smoothed the single sheet of notes on the lectern, and his gaze travelled across the pews. "No-one... no-one here should feel in any way that they contributed to... to her death. She wouldn't want that, and neither do I." He looked down, those eyes that so reminded me of Rebecca's suspiciously bright, for a moment, and there was silence, before he drew a slow breath. "One of her favourite songs was "Winter Rose'. If... if Melissa and Alison are ready...?"

What got us through that song was simply practice. Nothing more. I'd set the mike on a stand for Melissa, but she unclipped it halfway through the intro, and came and stood by me with an arm across my shoulders. By the time she began the second verse, with its "Tread softly where I lie...", I could hardly see my hands for tears, glad beyond belief I'd chosen to play sitting down for once. The song became a requiem for Rebecca, for Matt... for Trish. Somehow the words fit all of them.

The little church was silent for what seemed like forever once the final, repeated piano figure faded away, save for the sounds of private grief. At length, the priest stepped forward with a rustle of robes, and intoned, quiet but carrying, "Let us pray."

For once in my life, I did.

"I thought," said Martin, with that avuncular twinkle in his eye that I'd grown to recognise, "that you might like to to hold these, rather than just see them as numbers on a bank statement." We were gathered in the rec room of The Mill, us, Liam, Sarah and Clive, for what Kev jokingly referred to (with air quotes and audible capitals) as "The Meeting", as Sarah handed out neatly labelled brown envelopes.

We all looked at each other, before Melissa giggled. "Well, I'm going to open mine." It turned into a silly race to rip open the envelopes, before I found myself staring at a cheque for considerably more money than I'd ever seen in my life before.

Kev whistled. "Holy smoke."

Paul was somewhat more practical. "What does this cover?"

Martin was clearly enjoying our reactions. "First ninety days album and single royalties, plus tour and merchandise." He smiled. "Less advance, deductions, et cetera. Liam has a full breakdown."

I looked over at Clive, who was equally amused. He winked at me. "Remember what I told you, m'dear."

I laughed. "Buy you a beer, wasn't it?" And 'don't waste it'.

He chuckled. "Girl's quick." A glance at Martin. "So."

"Mm." Martin considered for a moment. "Right. Europe's cancelled, as we discussed. But we're holding the US dates from July the eighth onwards. Which gives you about seven weeks, in which we'd like to make a start on the second album." He looked at each of us in turn. "I heard you have some good material."

Darren nodded. "Half a dozen songs, at least."

Melissa asked, quietly, "Will it be Clive again?"

Clive cut in. "'Fraid not, m'darling." He held up a hand to forestall any protest. "Couple of reasons, but the main one is that my wife isn't well. And you nice folks have just made me rich enough that I don't have to work for a while. Much as I love you."

Darren arched an eyebrow. "And the other reason?"

He chuckled. "Might've known you'd ask. Mostly, I think you folks can do better'n me. The thing I do well is making stuff you've already got arrangements for sound tight. I'll gladly do a live album for you when it comes to it. But with a bunch of new stuff you haven't worked live, you need someone..." He glanced at Martin, who nodded. "I'm suggesting Brett Solomon."

"Who's he?" I asked.

"American guy, used to produce the band I played in, as well as...." He rattled off a list of seven or eight names, of which I'd both heard of and liked four. "Taught me pretty much everything I know about working in a studio."

"And," added Martin, "He's one of about half a dozen producers begging for a chance to work with you."

"Is one of them Harv?" asked Kev, drily.

Martin just smiled. "No comment." Something told me that even if he was, he'd have to be the last producer left in the world before Martin would let us work with him again.

"We'd be working in the States?" Darren enquired.

"That would be the plan," said Martin. "You'd fly out at the end of next week: his preferred studio's in upstate New York."

"Is this pretty much settled?" asked Paul.

Martin shook his head. "You get to argue. But I'd like for you to meet Brett first. He's flying in tomorrow for a couple of days, and Clive's agreed to give you some time here at the Mill."

Paul nodded. "That's fair. Anything else?"

"Just one thing." Again that smile. "Sarah will be carrying on with us: for now she's going to be your and Liam's PA, but in the long run she'll take over dealing with the press for you. Suzanne and Mickey will covering that with her for now." I remembered Mickey from a couple of the parties and Rebecca's funeral, a shortish, fair-haired Irishman in his late twenties with a roguish grin and the body of a gym instructor.

I think Sarah was quite surprised at the warmth with which that last piece of news was received.

The rehearsal session with Brett the following day went well: for all he was jet-lagged, he sat and listened in the control room as we ran through the new material in the afternoon, making the occasional quiet comment over the talkback. 'Quiet' in fact summed him up. He wasn't much taller than Melissa, soft-spoken with a trace of a Southern accent, dark hair shading to grey. At a guess I'd have put him a few years older than Clive. It was a good session: he didn't force things on us, just made the odd suggestion, usually prefaced with "What happens if....?" or "Have you guys tried...?" - more jumping-off points for improving things that anything else. I wondered if Clive had explained about the dynamics and personalities within the band before he started, as he managed to coax a vocal performance on 'Prey' out of Melissa that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

We had an impromptu, and surprisingly short, meeting after Sarah had driven him off to his hotel that evening. "Well?" asked Liam.

"He'll do," said Darren.

We looked at each other, and Kev burst out laughing. "OK. Something's wrong here. No-one's going to argue with him?"

I grinned. "Doesn't look like it."

One of the things I did before we flew out to the US again was to load up the backup I'd taken of Jason's laptop. This proved to be somewhat frustrating, as everything I suspected would help me understand what had been going on appeared to be stored in folders that were protected with a password. In the end, after several failed guesses, I gave up, zipped it all back up and left it on my hard drive just in case it proved useful.

I also visited Mr. Shaw again, and arranged for some of my royalty money to be invested in various safe places. As well as that, much to Melissa's amusement, I placed an order for a new Vauxhall Astra convertible, which was due to arrive shortly before we got back to the UK in August. She dug me playfully in the ribs. "Not buying a Ferrari?"

I laughed. "Not this time round. Besides, have you seen the waiting list?"

The other thing I did with the money was much less expensive, but still somehow important. I wrote a letter to Andrew Forrester - nothing much, just a friendly keeping-in-touch letter with a man I'd taken a liking to, and whose daughter I'd been glad to call a friend. With it, for a reason that I'm not sure I could have explained, but that went beyond the simple fact that I knew it was needed, went a cheque to provide a new piano for the church.

Eastern Wind were off to the Far East in June for the best part of two months, touring, in fact, with Rich, our former sound engineer's band Promise, who had quite the following in Japan. As a result, I saw a lot of Greg that week - we spent several nights back at his flat with a DVD, usually a horror movie, and, well...

He laughed down at me. "You know... I can't remember the last time we actually watched the end of one of these."

My top, at least, was still on the sofa as the credits rolled. We weren't, though. "Mmm." I slid my arms round his neck, stole another kiss. "I get distracted."

"Is that it?" He lifted his head to survey the trail of clothes. "You know, I think I must've been missing out on a good seduction technique till I met you."

I giggled. "What? Scare a girl half to death till she jumps into your arms? Only works for me." The silly thing was, it did, too.

His hand wandered, teasingly, across my middle. "So I should leave the DVD collection at home?"

I trapped his fingers under mine. "No Japanese groupies."

Greg kissed me softly. "I promise."

I kissed him back, releasing his hand to stray where it would, and wrapped my arms around him. i mean, what else do you do with the guy who not only protects you from hordes of ravening chainsaw-wielding zombies, but promises to be faithful afterwards?

There were two other additions to our little group when we arrived in the US: Martin had arranged for us to have a couple of bodyguards. Two more different guys you couldn't imagine. Adie Booth was lean, wiry, with greying fair hair and a pair of mirror shades that he almost never took off. In his early thirties, he wouldn't let on exactly what he'd done before, but Kev and Paul suspected he was ex-SAS. By contrast, Carl Logan was black, built like a US football player, as deceptively quick as Adie was strong, and made no bones at all about being an ex-US Marine. Adie apparently was personally known to Martin, whereas Suzanne had 'borrowed' Carl on our behalf from Crawler's entourage.

We'd managed, with no small degree of success, to dodge the press fallout from Rebecca and Trish's deaths while we were in the UK, but our first day in the States was marred by a big splash in one of the tabloids back home. Trish's father had, evidently, been persuaded to talk to the paper in return for a generous sum of money, and in the interview he essentially blamed the band for Trish's death, and outright accused me of fabricating the account of my talk with her and her involvement in what had happened to us. He even hinted, without saying so outright, that I could have framed her for Rebecca's death. Apart from anything else, I had a series of cast iron alibis for the entire day of the accident. Mickey, who was with us for the first week, suggested I have Martin talk to a lawyer.

"Why?" I asked, somewhat naively.

"That's libel."

"It... Oh." I supposed it was. "I... is it going to make it any better if I do? It's certainly not going to make Mr. Yates like me any more than he does."

He shrugged. "Depends, I suppose."

"It..." I tried to explain. "It's just... It sounds like to me it's just him finding something to lash out at." It wasn't a nice thing to say, but... "Kind of like his daughter did. I can't see that suing him for libel helps."

Mickey smiled. "You're too nice, you know?" He looked thoughtful for a moment. "We need to say something, though. Can I work with that whole you being understanding line?"

If there was one part of being in Secret Muse I hated, it was the whole minefield that was the tabloid press. The serious music journalists, the ones who actually understood, I could handle, but dealing with people who didn't care who you were, who spent most of their time twisting what you said to suit what they wanted it to say? No thanks. I sighed. "Go on. Do what you have to. Just..." Maybe I was too nice. "Try and leave the poor guy some dignity. I can't begin to imagine how much this all must hurt."

It died down after a couple of days: we had to field a few questions from US journalists, but whatever Mickey did and said on our behalf seemed to at least temporarily satisfy the tabloid journalists. By then, we were settled in the studio with Brett, staying in a hotel some twenty minutes drive away, and laying down backing tracks for the new album.

We settled into a routine pretty quickly - Adie drove Melissa, Sarah and I to and from the hotel, while Carl drove the guys. After a week, we'd made excellent progress: Brett did, indeed, have a very similar approach to Clive, laying down a basic backing with all of us present, and then adding to, and sometimes replacing, the instruments that were there. It gave the whole the same energetic, live feel of the first album, with an added polish and gloss. In fact, it was starting to sound like the best parts of something Clive and Harv could have made together if they could have kept from being at each other's throats for long enough.

We were all sitting in the hotel bar that first Friday night, listening to one of Brett's stories about Clive, when my phone went, the beep of a text message. I glanced down, hit the necessary button, to be rewarded with just three words. "I'm watching you."

Melissa looked over, and smiled. "Bit late for Greg, isn't it?"

It was, too - by my reckoning it was about three thirty a.m. in England. Besides, I didn't recognise the number. "Yeah..." Strange. I texted Greg on his usual number. "R U messing me around?"

It took a good few minutes for a reply. "??? asleep. On my own + missing U XXX G"

Strange indeed. I shrugged at Melissa. "Someone getting the wrong number, I think." I sent Greg a quick reply, and deleted the original message. Ten minutes later, I got another, from the same number. "I could be anywhere, Alison."

Scratch the wrong number theory. And it wasn't funny, either. It appeared to be a US phone, too. "Who is this?" I sent back. How the hell had they got my number?

The reply was long enough coming that I had begun to believe whoever it was had given up. "How does it feel to have blood on your hands?" That was enough for me: I deleted it, and turned the phone off, with hands that wouldn't quite keep steady. Melissa watched me with a frown. "Ali? You OK?"

I pocketed the phone, and signalled for another Scotch. "I... yeah. Just some weirdo texting me."

Adie, who'd been sufficiently quiet and anonymous drinking orange juice in the corner of the bar that I'd forgotten he was there, looked up. "Show me?"

I shook my head. "I deleted them, and the phone's off."

"Next time, don't. And block the number, if you can." It was the first time I'd ever heard him give an order, and from the soft yet somehow deadly serious tone, I was quite prepared to believe the ex-SAS theory.

When I turned the phone on in the morning, there was another text. "Are you afraid, Alison?" It took me a couple of minutes to stop shaking, another ten to figure out how to block the number, and then I took the phone to Adie.

He made a note of the number. "Leave it to me."

"What can you do?" I asked.

He shrugged, "Maybe nothing. Leave it to me, though."

I'd finally calmed down enough not to jump every time Greg texted me by the end of Sunday. After a long pre-bedtime (for him) conversation, I pulled out my laptop. I'd made myself a promise, or perhaps it was to Trish, to keep up the diary for the band's website, and I figured I was overdue for an update on our recording efforts. First though, I fired up my e-mail program, and let it filter through the junk and spam. It left me with a couple of mails, one a progress update on the delivery of my car, and the other...

The other had one attachment, a slightly blurry photograph of Melissa and I outside the hotel from earlier that evening. And a message that read, "I'm still watching you."