Praise for Alice Feeney

‘Clever, compulsive… You will never guess the ending of this one!’

Louise Candlish

‘A bold and original voice – I loved this book’

Clare Mackintosh

‘A fiendishly well-plotted, deliciously dark and twisty read’

Lucy Foley

‘Alice Feeney has single-handedly made the bookmark obselete’

Christina Dalcher

‘Dark, but utterly compelling. I couldn’t stop reading it’

Ruth Jones

‘Expect perfectly imbedded twists and sharply drawn characters. A brilliant thriller’

Ali Land

‘Boldly plotted, tightly knotted – a provocative true-or-false thriller that deepens and darkens to its ink-black finale. Marvellous’

A J Finn

‘A rollercoaster of a ride. Alice Feeney goes where others might fear to tread. I loved it!’

Jane Corry

‘A gripping debut with a brilliant twist, I loved it’

B A Paris

‘Devoured it in almost one go… a twisty, gripping, clever, brilliant read’

Karen Hamilton

‘Twisty and gripping’

Jane Fallon

ALICE FEENEY is a writer and journalist. She spent fifteen years at the BBC, where she worked as a reporter, news editor, arts and entertainment producer and One O’Clock News producer.

Her debut novel, Sometimes I Lie, was a New York Times and international bestseller. It has been translated into over twenty languages and is being made into a TV series by Ellen DeGeneres and Warner Bros. starring Sarah Michelle Geller.

Alice has lived in London and Sydney and has now settled in the Surrey countryside, where she lives with her husband and dog. His & Hers is her third novel.

Also by Alice Feeney

Sometimes I Lie

I Know Who You Are

His & Hers

Alice Feeney

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © Diggi Books Ltd 2020

Alice Feeney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008370954

Version 2020-05-20

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008370947

For Them.

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Also by Alice Feeney

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Him

Her

Her

Him

Her

Six Months Later

Him

Her

Him

Her

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions

Extract

About the Publisher

It wasn’t love at first sight.

I can admit that now. But by the end, I loved her more than I thought it was possible to love another human being. I cared about her far more than I ever cared about myself. That’s why I did it. Why I had to. I think it’s important that people know that, when they find out what I’ve done. If they do. Perhaps then they might understand that I did it for her.

There is a difference between being and feeling alone, and it is possible to miss someone and be with them at the same time. There have been plenty of people in my life: family, friends, colleagues, lovers. A full cast of the usual suspects that make a person’s social circle, but mine has always felt a little bent out of shape. None of the relationships I have ever formed with another human being feel real to me. More like a series of missed connections.

People might recognise my face, they may even know my name, but they’ll never know the real me. Nobody does. I’ve always been selfish with the true thoughts and feelings inside my head; I don’t share them with anyone. Because I can’t. There is a version of me I can only ever be with myself. I sometimes think the secret to success is the ability to adapt. Life rarely stays the same, and I’ve frequently had to reinvent myself in order to keep up. I learned how to change my looks, my life… even my voice.

I also learned how to fit in, but constantly trying to do so is more than just uncomfortable now, it hurts. Because I don’t. Fit. I fold my jagged edges inside myself, and smooth over the most obvious differences between us, but I am not the same as you. There are over seven billion people on the planet, and yet I have somehow managed to spend a lifetime feeling alone.

I’m losing my mind and not for the first time, but sanity can often be lost and found. People will say that I snapped, lost the plot, came unhinged. But when the time came it was – without doubt – the right thing to do. I felt good about myself afterwards. I wanted to do it again.

There are at least two sides to every story:

Yours and mine.

Ours and theirs.

His and hers.

Which means someone is always lying.

Lies told often enough can start to sound true, and we all sometimes hear a voice inside our heads, saying something so shocking, we pretend it is not our own. I know exactly what I heard that night, while I waited at the station for her to come home for the last time. At first, the train sounded just like any other in the distance. I closed my eyes and it was like listening to music, the rhythmic song of the carriages on the tracks getting louder and louder:

Clickety-click. Clickety-click. Clickety-click.

But then the sound started to change, translating into words inside my head, repeating themselves over and over, until it was impossible not to hear:

Kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all.

Her

Anna Andrews

Monday 06:00

Mondays have always been my favourite day.

The chance to start again.

A clean enough slate with just the dust of your own past mistakes still visible, almost, but not quite wiped away.

I realise it’s an unpopular opinion – to be fond of the first day of the week – but I’m full of those. My view of the world tends to be a little tilted. When you grow up sitting in life’s cheap seats, it’s too easy to see behind the puppets dancing on its stage. Once you’ve seen the strings, and who pulls them, it can be hard to enjoy the rest of the show. I can afford to sit where I want now, choose any view I like, but those fancy-looking theatre boxes are only good for looking down on other people. I’ll never do that. Just because I don’t like to look back doesn’t mean I don’t remember where I came from. I’ve worked hard for my ticket and the cheap seats still suit me fine.

I don’t spend a lot of time getting ready in the mornings – there is no point putting on make-up, just for someone else to take it off and start again when I get to work – and I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t eat much at all, but I do enjoy cooking for others. Apparently, I’m a feeder.

I stop briefly in the kitchen to pick up my Tupperware carrier, filled with homemade cupcakes for the team. I barely remember making them. It was late, definitely after my third glass of something dry and white. I prefer red but it leaves a tell-tale stain on my lips, so I save it for weekends only. I open the fridge and notice that I didn’t finish last night’s wine, so I drink what is left straight from the bottle, before taking it with me as I leave the house. Monday is also when my rubbish gets collected. The recycling bin is surprisingly full for someone who lives alone. Mostly glass.

I like to walk to work. The streets are pretty empty at this time of day, and I find it calming. I cross Waterloo Bridge and weave my way through Soho towards Oxford Circus, while listening to the Today programme. I’d prefer to listen to music, a little Ludovico perhaps or Taylor Swift depending on my mood – there are two very different sides to my personality – but instead I endure the dulcet tones of middle-class Britain, telling me what they think I should know. Their voices still feel foreign to my ears, despite sounding like my own. But then I didn’t always speak this way. I’ve been presenting the BBC One O’Clock News bulletin for almost two years, and I still feel like a fraud.

I stop by the flattened cardboard box that has been bothering me the most recently. I can see a strand of blonde hair poking out the top, so I know she’s still there. I don’t know who she is, only that I might have been her had life unfolded differently. I left home when I was sixteen because it felt like I had to. I don’t do what I’m about to do now out of kindness; I do it because of a misplaced moral compass. Just like the soup kitchen I volunteered at last Christmas. We rarely deserve the lives we lead. We pay for them however we can, be it with money, guilt, or regret.

I open the plastic carry case and put one of my carefully constructed cupcakes down on the pavement, between her cardboard box and the wall, so that she’ll see it when she wakes. Then, worried she might not like or appreciate my chocolate frosting – for all I know she could be diabetic – I take a twenty-pound note from my purse and slide it underneath. I don’t mind if she spends my money on alcohol; I do.

Radio 4 continues to irritate me, so I switch off the latest politician lying in my ears. Their over-rehearsed dishonesty doesn’t fit with this image of real people with real problems. Not that I’d ever say that out loud or on-air during an interview. I’m paid to be impartial regardless of how I feel.

Maybe I’m a liar too. I chose this career because I wanted to tell the truth. I wanted to tell the stories that mattered most, the ones that I thought people needed to hear. Stories that I hoped might change the world and make it a better place. But I was naïve. People working in the media today have more power than politicians, but what good is trying to tell the truth about the world when I can’t bear to be honest about my own story: who I am, where I came from, what I’ve done.

I bury the thoughts like I always do. Lock them in a secure secret box inside my head, push them to the darkest corner right at the back, and hope they won’t escape again any time soon.

I walk the final few streets to Broadcasting House, then search inside my handbag for my ever-elusive security pass. My fingers find one of my little tins of mints instead. It rattles in protest as I flip it open and pop a tiny white triangle inside my mouth, as though it were a pill. Wine on my breath before the morning meeting is best avoided. I locate my pass and step inside the glass revolving doors, feeling several sets of eyes turn my way. That’s OK. I’m pretty good at being the version of myself I think people want me to be. At least on the outside.

I know everyone by name, including the cleaners still sweeping the floor. It costs almost nothing to be kind and I have a very efficient memory, despite the drink. Once past security – a little more thorough than it used to be, thanks to the state of the world we have curated for ourselves – I stare down at the newsroom and it feels like home. Cocooned inside the basement of the BBC building, but visible from every floor, the newsroom resembles a brightly lit red-and-white open-plan warren. Almost every available space is filled with screens and tightly packed desks, with an eclectic collection of journalists sitting behind each one.

These people aren’t just my colleagues, they’re like a dysfunctional surrogate family. I’m almost forty years old, but I don’t have anyone else. No children. No husband. Not anymore. I’ve worked here for almost twenty years but, unlike those with friends or family connections, I started right at the bottom. I took a few detours along the way, and the stepping-stones to success were sometimes quite slippery, but I got where I wanted to be, eventually.

Patience is the answer to so many of life’s questions.

Serendipity smiled at me when the previous presenter of the programme left. She went into labour a month early, and five minutes before the lunchtime bulletin. Her waters broke and I got my lucky break. I’d just come back from maternity leave myself – earlier than planned – and was the only correspondent in the newsroom with any presenting experience. All of which was overtime and overnight – the shifts nobody else wanted – I was that desperate for any opportunity that might help my career. Presenting a network bulletin was something I had been dreaming of my whole life.

There was no time for a trip to hair and make-up that day. They rushed me on set and did what they could, powdering my face at the same time as they miked me up. I practised reading the headlines on the autocue, and the director was calm and kind in my earpiece. His voice steadied me. I don’t remember much about that first half-hour programme, but I do recall the congratulations afterwards. From newsroom nobody to network presenter in less than an hour.

My boss is called The Thin Controller behind his slightly hunched back. He’s a small man trapped inside a tall man’s body. He also has a speech impediment. It prevents him from pronouncing his Rs, and the rest of the newsroom from taking him seriously. He has never been good at filling gaps on rotas so, after my successful debut, he decided to let me fill in until the end of that week. Then the next. A three-month contract as a presenter – instead of my staff position – swelled into six, after that it was extended to the end of the year accompanied by a nice little pay rise. Viewing figures went up when I started presenting the programme, so I was allowed to stay. My predecessor never returned; she got pregnant again while on maternity leave and hasn’t been seen since. Almost two years later, I’m still here and expect my latest contract to be renewed any day.

I take my seat between the editor and the lead producer, then clean my desk and keyboard with an antibacterial wipe. There is no telling who might have been sitting here overnight. The newsroom never sleeps, and sadly not everyone in it adheres to my preferred level of hygiene. I open up the running order and smile; it still gives me a little thrill to see my name at the top:

Newsreader: Anna Andrews.

I start writing the intros for each story. Despite popular opinion, presenters don’t just read the news, we write it. Or at least I do. Newsreaders, like normal human beings, come in all shapes and sizes. There are several who have crawled so far up their own arses I’m amazed they can still sit down, let alone read an autocue. The nation would be appalled if they knew how some of their so-called national treasures behaved behind the scenes. But I won’t tell. Journalism is a game with more snakes than ladders. Getting to the top takes a long time, and one wrong move can land you right back down at the bottom. Nobody is bigger than the machine.

The morning breezes by just like any other: a constantly evolving running order, conversations with correspondents in the field, discussions with the director about graphics and screens. There is an almost permanent queue of reporters and producers waiting to talk to the editor beside me. More often than not, to request a longer duration for their package or two-way.

Everyone always wants just a little more time.

I don’t miss those days at all: begging to get on-air, constantly fretting when I didn’t. There simply isn’t time to tell every story.

The rest of the team are unusually quiet. I take a quick look to my left, and notice that the producer has the latest rota up on her screen. She closes it down as soon as she sees me looking. Rotas are second only to breaking news when it comes to increasing stress levels in the newsroom. They come out late and rarely go down well, with the distribution of the most unpopular shifts – lates, weekends, overnights – always cause for contention. I work Monday to Friday now, and haven’t requested any leave for over six months, so, unlike my poor colleagues, there is nothing rota-shaped for me to worry about.

An hour before the programme, I visit make-up. It’s a nice place to escape to, relatively peaceful and quiet compared with the constant noise of the newsroom. My hair is blow-dried into an obedient chestnut bob, and my face is covered with HD-grade foundation. I wear more make-up for work than I did for my wedding. The thought forces me to retreat inside myself for a moment, and I feel the ridge of indentation on my finger, where my ring used to be.

The programme goes mostly according to plan, despite a few last-minute changes while we are on-air: some breaking news, a delayed TV package, a camera with a mind of its own in the studio, and a dodgy feed from Washington. I’m forced to wrap up an over-enthusiastic political correspondent in Downing Street, one who regularly takes up more than their allotted time. Some people like the sound of their own voices a little too much.

The debrief begins while I’m still on set, waiting to say goodbye to viewers after the weather segment. Nobody wants to hang around any longer than absolutely necessary after the programme, so they always start without me. It’s a gathering of correspondents and producers who worked on the show, but is also attended by representatives of other departments: home news, foreign news, editing, graphics, as well as The Thin Controller.

I swing by my desk to collect my Tupperware carrier before joining everyone, keen to share my latest culinary creations with the team. I haven’t told anyone that it’s my birthday today yet, but I might.

I make my way across the newsroom towards them, and stop briefly when I see a woman I don’t recognise. She has her back to me, with two small children dressed in matching outfits by her side. I notice the cute cupcakes my colleagues are already eating. Not homemade – like mine – but shop-bought and expensive-looking. Then I return my attention to the woman handing them out. I stare at her bright red hair, framing her pretty face with a bob so sharp it could have been cut with a laser. When she turns and smiles in my direction it feels like a slap.

Someone passes me a glass of warm prosecco, and I see the drinks trolley that management always orders from catering whenever a member of staff leaves. It happens a lot in this business. The Thin Controller taps his glass with an overgrown fingernail, then he starts to speak, strange-sounding words tumbling out of his crumb-covered lips.

‘We can’t wait to welcome you back…’

It’s the only sentence my ears manage to translate. I stare at Cat Jones, the woman who presented the programme before I did, standing there with her beautiful little girls and trademark red hair. I feel sick.

‘… and our thanks to Anna of course, for taking the helm while you were away.’

Eyes are turned and glasses are raised in my direction. My hands start to tremble, and I hope my face is doing a better job of hiding my feelings.

‘It was on the rota, I’m so sorry, we all thought you knew.’

The producer standing next to me whispers the words but I’m unable to form a reply.

Afterwards, the Thin Controller also apologises. He sits in his office, while I stand, and stares at his hands while he speaks, as though the words he is struggling to find might be written on his sweaty fingers. He thanks me, and tells me that I’ve done a great job filling in for the last…

‘Two years,’ I say, when he doesn’t appear to know or understand how long it has been.

He shrugs as though it were nothing.

‘It is her job, I’m afraid. She has a contract. We can’t sack people for having a baby, not even when they have two!’

He laughs.

I don’t.

‘When does she come back?’ I ask.

A frown folds itself onto the vast space that is his forehead.

‘She comes back tomorrow. It’s all on the…’ I watch as he tries and fails to find a substitute for the word rota, like anything beginning with the letter R. ‘… it’s all on the wota, has been for some time. You’re back on the correspondent desk, but don’t worry, you can still fill in for her, and present the programme during school holidays, Christmas and Easter, that sort of thing. We all think you did a terrific job. Here’s your new contract.’

I stare down at the crisp white sheets of A4 paper, covered in carefully constructed words from a faceless HR employee. My eyes only seem able to focus on one line:

News Correspondent: Anna Andrews.

As I step out of his office, I see her again: my replacement. Although I suppose the truth is that I was only ever hers. It’s a terrible thing to admit, even to myself, but as I look at Cat Jones with her perfect hair and perfect children, standing there chatting and laughing with my team, I wish she was dead.

Him

Detective Chief Inspector Jack Harper

Tuesday 05:15

The sound of my phone buzzing wakes me from the kind of dream I don’t wish to be woken from. One in which I am not a fortysomething-year-old man, living in a house with a mortgage I can’t afford, a toddler I can’t keep up with, and a woman who is not my wife but nags me anyway. A better man would have got his shit together by now, instead of sleepwalking through a loaned-out life.

I squint at my phone in the darkness and see that it is Tuesday. It is also stupidly early, so I’m relieved the text doesn’t appear to have woken anyone else. Sleep deprivation tends to have terrible consequences in this house, though not for me – I’ve always been a bit of a night owl. I shouldn’t feel excitement about what I read on the screen, but I do. The truth is, since I left London, my job has been as dull as a nun’s underwear drawer.

I’m head of the Major Crime Team here, which sounds exciting, but I’m based in deepest, darkest Surrey now, which isn’t. Blackdown is a quintessential English village less than two hours from the capital, and petty crime and the occasional burglary tends to be as ‘major’ as it gets. The village is hidden from the outside world by a sentinel of trees. The ancient forest seems to have trapped Blackdown – and its inhabitants – in the past, as well as permanent shadow. But its chocolate-box beauty could never be denied. The old lanes and narrow streets are filled with an abundance of thatched cottages, white picket fences and an above-average number of elderly residents, who all appreciate a below-average crime rate. It’s the kind of place people come to die, and somewhere I never thought I’d find myself living.

I stare at the message on my phone, practically drooling over the words as I drink them down:

Jane Doe discovered in Blackdown Woods overnight. MCT requested. Please call in.

Just the idea of a body being found here feels like it must be a mistake, but I already know it isn’t. Ten minutes later, I’m sufficiently dressed, caffeinated, and in the car.

My latest second-hand 4x4 looks like it could do with a wash, and I realise – a little too late – that I do too. I sniff my armpits and consider going back inside the house, but I don’t want to waste time or wake anyone. I hate the way they both look at me sometimes. They have the same eyes, filled with tears and disappointment a tad too often.

I’m slightly overenthusiastic perhaps to get to the crime scene before everyone else, but I can’t help it. Nothing this bad has happened here for years, and it makes me feel good, optimistic and energised. The thing about working for the police for as long as I have, is that you start to think like a criminal without being seen as one.

I turn on the engine, praying it will start, ignoring the glimpse of my own reflection in the rear-view mirror. My hair – which is now more grey than black – is sticking out in all directions. There are dark circles beneath my eyes, and I look older than I remember being. I try to console my ego; it’s the middle of the bloody night after all. Besides, I don’t care what I look like, and other people’s opinions matter even less to me than my own. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

I drive with one hand on the steering wheel, while the other feels the stubble on my chin. Maybe I should have at least shaved. I glance down at my crumpled shirt. I’m sure we must own an ironing board, but I’ve no idea where it is or when I last used it. For the first time in a long time, I wonder what other people see when they see me. I used to be quite the catch. I used to be a lot of things.

It’s still dark when I pull into the National Trust car park, and I can see that – despite coming straight here – everyone else appears to have beaten me to it. There are two police cars and two vans, as well as unmarked vehicles. Forensics are already on the scene, as is Detective Sergeant Priya Patel. Her career choice hasn’t managed to grind her down yet; she’s still shiny and new. Too young to let the job make her feel old, too inexperienced to know what it will do to her eventually. What it does to us all. Her daily enthusiasm is exhausting, as is her perpetually cheerful disposition. My head hurts just from looking at her, so I tend to avoid doing so as often as it is possible when you work with someone every day.

Priya’s ponytail swings from side to side as she hurries towards my car. Her tortoiseshell glasses slip down her nose, and her big brown eyes are a bit too full of excitement. She doesn’t look as if she’s been dragged from her bed in the middle of the night. Her slim-fit suit can’t possibly be keeping her petite body warm, and her freshly polished brogues slide a little on the mud. I find it strangely satisfying to see them get dirty.

I sometimes wonder whether my colleague sleeps fully dressed, just in case she needs to leave the house in a hurry. She put in a special request to transfer here to work under me a couple of months ago, though God knows why. If there was ever a time in my life when I was as keen as Priya Patel, I can’t remember it.

As soon as I step outside the car, it starts to rain. An instant heavy downpour, saturating my clothes in seconds, and assaulting me from above. I look up and study the sky, which thinks it is night even though it is now morning. The moon and stars would still be visible, had they not been covered with a blanket of dark clouds. Torrential rain is not ideal for preserving outdoor evidence.

Priya interrupts my thoughts and I slam the car door without meaning to. She rushes over, trying to hold her umbrella over my head, and I shoo her away.

‘DCI Harper, I—’

‘I’ve told you before, please call me Jack. We’re not in the army,’ I say.

Her face experiences a freeze-frame. She looks like a chastised puppy, and I feel like the miserable old git I know I’ve become.

‘The Target Patrol Team called it in,’ she says.

‘Is anyone from the TPT still here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good, I want to see them before they leave.’

‘Of course. The body is this way. Early indications show that—’

‘I want to see it for myself,’ I interrupt.

‘Yes, boss.’

It’s as though my first name is simply a word she can’t pronounce.

We pass a steady stream of staff I vaguely recognise – people whose names I’ve forgotten either because I didn’t learn them in the first place, or I haven’t seen them for so long. It doesn’t matter. My small but perfectly formed Major Crime Team is based near here, but covers the whole county. We work with different people every day. Besides, this job isn’t about making friends, it’s about not making enemies. Priya has a lot to learn about that. The hushed quiet we walk in might be uncomfortable for her, but not for me. Silence is my favourite symphony; I can’t think clearly when life gets too loud.

She shines a torch on the ground a little way ahead of our footsteps – irritatingly efficient as always – as we crunch over a dark carpet of fallen leaves and broken twigs. Autumn has been and gone, a guest appearance this year before shying away to make room for an overconfident winter. The top button is missing from my coat, so it no longer does up all the way. I overcompensate for the gap with a Harry Potter-style scarf displaying my initials – a gift from an ex. I’ve never quite managed to part with it, a bit like the woman who gave it to me. It probably makes me look like a fool, but I don’t care. There are some things we only hold on to because of who gave them to us: names, beliefs, scarves. Besides, I like the way it feels around my neck: a cosy personalised noose.

My breath forms clouds of condensation, and I shove my hands deeper into my coat pockets trying to keep dry and warm. I’m pleased to see that someone thought to put up a tent around the body, and I step inside the white PVC door. My fingers find the shape of a child’s dummy in my pocket at the exact moment my eyes see the corpse. I grip on to the pacifier so hard that the plastic cuts into my palm. It causes a small burst of pain, the kind I sometimes need to feel. It isn’t as though I haven’t seen a dead person before, but this is different.

The woman is partially covered by leaves, and quite a distance from the main path. She would have been easy to miss in this dark corner of the woods, were it not for the bright lights the team have already set up around her.

‘Who found the body?’ I ask.

‘Anonymous tip-off,’ says Priya. ‘Someone called the station from a payphone down the lane.’

I am grateful for an answer that is as short as the person who gave it. Priya is prone to being a talker, and I am prone to impatience.

I take a step closer, and lean down towards the dead woman’s face. She’s in her mid-thirties, slim, pretty – if you like that kind of thing, which I suppose I do – and her general appearance suggests three things to me: money, vanity, and self-control. She has the kind of body that has been taken care of with years of gym visits, diets and costly creams. Her long, expertly bleached blonde hair looks as though she might have just brushed it before lying down in the mud. Strands of gold in the grime. No sign of a struggle. Her bright blue eyes are still wide open, as though shocked by the last thing that they saw, and from the colour and condition of her skin, she has not been here long.

The corpse is fully clothed. Everything this woman was wearing looks expensive: a woollen coat, a silky-looking blouse, and a black leather skirt. Her shoes appear to be the only thing missing – not ideal for a walk in the woods. It’s impossible not to notice her small, pretty feet, but it’s the blouse I find myself staring at. Like the lace bra underneath, I can see that it used to be white. Both are now stained red, and it’s clear from the frenzied pattern of flesh and torn fabric that the victim was stabbed multiple times in the chest.

I have a curious urge to touch her, but don’t.

That’s when I notice dead woman’s fingernails. They’ve been roughly cut to the quick, and that isn’t all. I loathe being seen wearing glasses, but my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, so I find the non-prescription pair I keep for emergencies and take a closer look.

Red varnish has been used to spell letters on the nails of her right hand:

T W O

I look at the left hand and it’s the same, but the letters spell a different word:

F A C E D

This wasn’t a crime of passion; this murder was planned.

I tune back into here and now, and realise that Priya hasn’t noticed yet, she’s been too busy reading me her notes and telling me her thoughts. I generally find she tends to talk unless specifically asked to stop. Her words trip over themselves, rushing out of her mouth and into my ears. I try to look interested, translating her hurried sentences as she says them.

‘… I’ve initiated all standard golden hour procedures. There’s no CCTV in this part of town, but we’re gathering footage from the high street. I’m guessing she didn’t walk here barefoot in the middle of winter, but without any ID or vehicle registration – the car park was completely empty – I can’t issue an ANPR…’

People rarely say what they mean under stress, and all I hear is her desperation to prove to me that she can handle this.

‘Have you seen a dead body before?’ I ask, interrupting.

She stands a little straighter and sticks out her chin like a disgruntled child.

‘Yes. In the morgue.’

‘Not the same,’ I mutter beneath my breath.

There are so many things I could teach her, things she doesn’t know she needs to learn.

‘I’ve been thinking about the message the killer wanted to send,’ Priya says, staring back down at her notepad, where I can see the beginnings of one of her many lists.

‘They wanted people to know that the victim was two-faced,’ I reply, and she looks confused. ‘Her fingernails. I think someone cut them and wrote a message.’

Priya frowns then bends down to get a closer look. She stares up at me in wonder, as though I’m Hercule Poirot. I guess reading is my superpower.

I avoid her gaze and return my attention to the face of the woman lying in the dirt. Then I instruct one of the forensics team to take pictures of her from every angle. She looks like the kind of person who enjoyed having her photo taken, wearing her vanity like a badge. The flash blinds me, and I’m reminded of another time and place; London a few years ago, reporters and cameras on a street corner, clamouring to get a shot of something they shouldn’t want to see. I bury the memory – I can’t stand the press – then I notice something else.

The dead woman’s mouth is ever so slightly open.

‘Shine your torch on her face.’

Priya does as I ask, and I get down on my knees again to take a closer look at the body. Lips that were once pink have turned blue, but I can see something red hiding in the dark space between them. I reach to touch it, without thinking, as though under a spell.

‘Sir?’

Priya interrupts my mistake before I make it. She is uncomfortably close to me, so much so that I can smell her perfume, along with her breath: a light whiff of recently drunk tea. I turn and see an old frown form on her young face. I would have thought this whole experience – finding a body in the woods for the first time – might have fazed her, unnerved her a little, but maybe I was wrong. I try to remember how old Priya is – I find it so hard to tell with women. If I had to guess I’d say late twenties or early thirties. Still hungry with ambition, confident of her own potential, unscarred by the disappointments that life has yet to hit her with.

‘Shouldn’t we wait for the pathologist to examine the body before we touch anything?’ she asks, already knowing the answer.

Priya sticks to the rules the way good liars stick to their stories. She says ‘pathologist’ like a kid who just learned a new word in school, one who wants people to hear them use it in a sentence.

‘Absolutely,’ I reply, and take a step back.

Unlike my colleague, I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before, but this is not like any case I have previously worked on. I zone out again while Priya starts to speculate about the identity of the woman. It feels like this is the start of something big, and I wonder if I’m up to the task. No two murders are the same, but it’s been years since I handled a case even remotely like this, and a lot has changed since then. The job has changed, I’ve changed, and it isn’t just that.

This is different.

I’ve never worked on the murder of someone I know before.

And I knew this woman well.

I was with her last night.

Her

Tuesday 06:30

We all have secrets; some we won’t even tell ourselves.

I don’t know what woke me, or what time it is, or where I am when I first open my eyes. Everything is pitch-black. My fingers find the bedside lamp, which sheds some light on the matter, and I’m pleased to see the familiar sight of my own bedroom. It is always a relief to know that I made it home when I wake up feeling like this.

I am not one of those women that you read about in books, or see on TV dramas, who frequently drink too much and forget what they did the night before. I’m not an amateur alcoholic and I’m not a cliché. We’re all addicted to something: money, success, social media, sugar, sex… the list of possibilities is endless. My drug of choice just happens to be alcohol. It can take a while for my memories to catch up with me, and I might not always be happy or proud about what I’ve done, but I do always remember. Always.

That doesn’t mean I have to tell the whole world about it.

Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.

Sometimes I think we all are.

The first thing I remember is that I lost my dream job, and the memory of my worst nightmare coming true seems to physically wound me. I switch off the light – I no longer wish to see things so clearly – then lie back down on the bed, burrowing beneath the covers. I wrap my arms around myself and close my eyes, as I recall walking out of The Thin Controller’s office, then leaving the newsroom mid-afternoon. I took a taxi home, feeling a little too unsteady on my feet to walk, then I phoned my mother to tell her what had happened. It was foolish, but I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.

My mother has become a bit forgetful and confused in recent years, and phone calls home only make me feel guilty for not visiting more often. I have my reasons for never wanting to go back where I came from, but they are better forgotten than shared. It’s easier to blame the miles for the distance that exists between some parents and their children, but when you bend the truth too far it tends to break. It sounded like Mum at first, on the other end of the line, but it wasn’t really her. After I poured my heart out, she was completely silent for a moment, then she asked whether egg and chips for tea would cheer me up after my bad day at school.

Mum doesn’t always remember that I’m thirty-six and live in London. She frequently forgets that I have a job, and that I used to have a husband and a child of my own. She didn’t even seem to know that it was my birthday. There was no card this year, or last, but it’s not her fault. Time is something my mother has forgotten how to tell. It moves differently for her now, often backwards instead of forwards. Dementia stole time from my mother, and stole my mother from me.

Reaching back inside my memories for a source of comfort was understandable given the circumstances, but I shouldn’t have stretched as far back as my childhood; it’s a bit too hit-and-miss.

When I got home, I closed all the curtains and opened a bottle of Malbec. Not because I was scared of being seen – I just like drinking in the dark. Sometimes even I don’t like to see the me that I become when nobody else is looking. After my second glass, I got changed into something less conspicuous – some old jeans and a black jumper – then I went to pay someone a visit.

When I returned a few hours later, I stripped out of my clothes in the hallway. They were covered in dirt, and I was filled with guilt. I remember opening another bottle and lighting the fire. I sat right in front of it, wrapped in a blanket, gulping down the wine. It took me forever to warm up after being out in the cold for so long. The logs hissed and whispered as though they had secrets of their own, and the firelight cast a series of ghostly shadows that danced around the room. I tried to get her out of my head, but even with my eyes squeezed shut, I could still see her face, smell her skin, hear her voice, crying.

I remember seeing the dirt beneath my fingernails, and scrubbing myself clean in the shower before I went to bed.

My phone buzzes again and I realise that must be what woke me. It’s early morning now, still as dark outside the flat as it is inside, and eerily quiet. Silence is a fear I’ve learned to feel, rather than hear. It creeps up on me, often lurking in the loudest corners of my mind. I listen but there is no sound of traffic, or birdsong, or life. No rumble of the boiler, or murmurs from the network of ancient pipes that try and fail to heat my home.

I stare at my mobile – the only light in the shadows – and see that it was a breaking-news text that woke me. The screen casts an unnatural glow. I read the headline about the body of a woman being found in the woods, and wonder whether I am still dreaming. The room seems a shade darker than it did before.

Then my phone starts to ring.

I answer it, and listen as The Thin Controller apologises for calling so early. He wonders whether I might be able to come in and present the programme.

‘What happened to Cat Jones?’ asks a voice that sounds a lot like my own.

‘We don’t know. But she hasn’t turned up for work, and nobody can get hold of her.’

The little pieces of me I got broken into yesterday start to creep and crawl back together. Sometimes I get lost in my own thoughts and fears. Trapped within a world of worry which, deep down, I know only exists inside my head. Anxiety often screams louder than logic, and when you spend too long imagining the worst you can make it come true.

The Thin Controller asks more questions when I fail to answer the first.

‘I’m weally sorry to wush you, Anna. But I do need to know now if possible…’

His speech impediment makes me hate him slightly less. I know exactly what I am going to say – I rehearsed this moment in my imagination.

‘Of course. I’d never let the team down.’

The tangible relief on the other end of the line is delicious.

‘You’re a lifesaver,’ he says, and for a moment I forget that the opposite is true.

It takes longer than usual to get myself ready; I’m still drunk, but it’s nothing some prescription eye drops and a cup of coffee can’t rectify. I drink it while it’s still too hot, so that it scalds my mouth; a little pain to ease the hurt. Then I pour myself some cold white wine from one of the bottles in the fridge – just a small glass, to soothe the burn. I head for the bathroom and ignore the bedroom door at the end of the corridor, the one I always keep closed. Sometimes our memories reframe themselves to reveal prettier pictures of our past, something a little less awful to look back at. Sometimes we need to paint over them, to pretend not to remember what is hidden underneath.

I shower and choose a red dress from my wardrobe, one with the tags still attached. I’m not a fan of shopping, so if I find something that suits me, I tend to buy it in every colour. Clothes don’t make the woman, but they can help disguise the cloth we are cut from. I don’t wear new things straightaway; I save them for when I need to feel good, rather than feel like myself. Now is a perfect time to wear something new and pretty to hide inside. When I’m satisfied with who I look like, I wrap her up in my favourite red coat – getting noticed isn’t always a bad thing.

I take a cab to work – keen to get my old self back to my old job as soon as possible – and pop a mint in my mouth before stepping into reception. It’s been less than twenty-four hours, but when I stare down at the newsroom it feels like coming home.

As I make my way towards the team, I can’t help noticing how they all turn to look up at me, like a group of meerkats. They exchange a series of anxious expressions, neatly carved into their tired-looking faces. I thought they would look happier to see me – not all presenters pull their weight the way I do to get a bulletin on-air – but I fix my unreturned smile, and grip the metal banister on the spiral staircase a little tighter than before. It feels like I might fall.

When I reach for the presenter’s chair, the editor stops me, putting her icy cold hand on top of mine. She shakes her head, then looks down at the floor, as though embarrassed. She’s the kind of woman who regularly prays for a fat bank account and thin body, but God always seems to muddle up her prayers. I stand in the middle of the seated team, feeling the heat of their stares on my flushed cheeks, trying to guess what they know that I don’t.

‘I’m so sorry!’ says a voice behind me. It seems ludicrous to describe it as brushed velvet, but that’s exactly how it sounds; a luxurious, feminine purr. It’s a voice I did not expect or want to hear. ‘The nanny cancelled at the last minute, my mother-inlaw agreed to step in but managed to crash her car on the way over – nothing too serious, just a bump really – and then, when I finally managed to settle the girls and leave the house, my train was delayed and I realised I’d forgotten my phone! I had no way of letting you know how late I was going to be. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but I’m here now.’

I don’t know why I believed Cat Jones was gone for good. It seems silly now, but I suppose I had imagined a little accident of some sort. Just something to prevent her from presenting the lunchtime bulletin ever again, so that I could step back into her shoes, and be the person I want to be. I am redundant now that she is here, and I can already feel myself start to crumple and fold into someone small and invisible. An unwanted and unnecessary spare part in a newly refurbished machine.

She tucks her bright red hair behind her ears, revealing diamond studs that look far more genuine than the person wearing them. Her hair colour can’t possibly be natural, but it looks perfect, just like her figure-hugging yellow dress, and the set of pearly white teeth revealed when she smiles in my direction. I feel like a frumpy fraud.

‘Anna!’ she says, as though we are old friends, not new enemies. I return the smile like an unwanted gift. ‘I thought you’d be at home with your own little one on your first day of freedom, now that I’m back! I hope motherhood is treating you well. What age is your daughter now?’

She would have been two years, three months and four days old.

I’ve never stopped counting.

I guess Cat remembers me being pregnant. It appears nobody ever told her what happened a few months after Charlotte was born. Everything seems very still and silent in the newsroom all of a sudden, with everyone staring in our direction. Her question sucks the air from my lungs and nobody, including me, seems able to answer it. Her eyebrows – which I’m quite certain have been tattooed onto her face – form a slightly theatrical frown.

‘Oh my goodness, did they call you in early because of me? I’m so sorry again, you could have had a nice morning off for a change, stayed at home with your family.’

I hold onto the presenter’s chair for balance.

‘It’s fine, honestly,’ I say, and manage a smile that hurts my face. ‘I’m looking forward to being a correspondent again to be honest, so I’m delighted you’re back. I actually miss getting out of the studio and covering real stories, meeting real people, you know?’

Her expression remains neutral. I interpret her silence as a way of saying that either she doesn’t agree, or doesn’t believe me.

‘If you’re so keen to get out and about again, maybe you should take a look at that murder that broke overnight? The body in the woods?’ Cat replies.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ says The Thin Controller, appearing by her side and smiling like a monkey with a new banana.

I feel myself start to shrink.

‘I haven’t seen the story,’ I lie.

I think now might be a good time to pretend I’m sick. I could go home, lock myself away from the world, and drink myself happy – or at least less sad – but Cat Jones continues to speak, the whole team appearing to hang on her every word.

‘A woman’s body was found overnight in a place called Blackdown, a sleepy Surrey village according to the wires. It might turn out to be nothing, but you could go check it out maybe? In fact, I insist we find you a camera crew. I’m sure you don’t want to just… hang around here.’

She glances over at what we call the taxi rank – the corner of the newsroom where the general correspondents sit, waiting to be deployed on a story, often not getting on air at all.

Journalists with specialist subjects – like business, health, entertainment, crime – all sit in offices upstairs. Their days tend to be busy and satisfying, their jobs relatively safe. But things are very different for a humble general correspondent. Some had quite promising careers at one time, but probably pissed off the wrong person, and have been gathering unaired stories like dust ever since.

There is a lot of dead wood in this newsroom, but the tough varnish of media unions can make it tricky to carve out. It is hard to imagine a more humiliating seat in the newsroom for a former presenter than correspondent corner. I’ve worked too hard for too long to disappear. I am going to find a way to get myself back on-air again, but this is the one story I don’t want to cover.

‘Is there anything else?’ I ask.

My voice sounds strange, as though the words got strangled.

The Thin Controller shrugs and shakes his head. I notice the light dusting of dandruff on the shoulders of his ill-fitting suit, and he sees me staring at it. I force a final smile to dispel the latest awkward silence.

‘Then I guess I’m on my way to Blackdown.’

We all have cracks, the little dents and blemishes that life makes in our hearts and minds, cemented by fear and anxiety, sometimes plastered over with fragile hope. I choose to hide the vulnerable sides of myself as well as I’m able at all times. I choose to hide a lot of things.

The only people with no regrets are liars.

The truth is, even though I’d rather be anywhere but here right now, Blackdown is the one place I don’t ever want to go back to. Especially not after last night. Some things are too difficult to explain, even to ourselves.

Killing the first one was easy.

She looked as though she didn’t want to be there when she stepped off the train at Blackdown Station. I could relate to that. I didn’t really want to be there either, but at least I was properly dressed for the cold in an old black jumper. Not like her. It was the last service from Waterloo, so she’d already had a late night, but clearly still had plans for the evening with her red lips, blonde hair, and black leather skirt. It looked like the real deal, not fake like the woman wearing it. Her career choice always seemed so selfless and compassionate to others – running a homeless charity – but I knew she was far from being a saint. More like a sinner trying to make up for her wickedness.

Sometimes we all do good things because we feel bad.

Blackdown was deserted, just as it always is at that time of night, so she was the only passenger to get off and walk down the lonely little platform. It’s a sleepy variety of town, where people go home and go to bed early on weeknights, shrouded in a cloak of middle-class manners and conformity. A place where if something bad does happen, people remember how to forget surprisingly quickly.

The station itself is a listed building constructed in 1850, as the stone carving above the double doors proudly declares. A picturesque and quaint village railway, despite Blackdown swelling into a town several years earlier. It’s like going back in time and stepping into a scene from a black-and-white film. Due to its heritage, it is protected from all unnecessary forms of modernisation. There are no security cameras, and only one way in and one way out.

I could have killed her there and then.

But her phone rang.

She talked to the person who called all the way from the platform to the car park, so even if nobody had seen, someone might have heard.

I watched as she slid into her Audi TT, a company car she had decided the charity could pay for, along with other things, including a designer coat, a trip to New York, and highlights in her hair. I’d seen the yearly statements filed by her accountant. Found them in her home office – the desk drawer wasn’t even locked. She was regularly stealing money from the charity and spending it on herself, and it would have been a crime to let her keep getting away with it.

She drove the short distance from the station to the woods, and it wasn’t far for me to have to follow. I watched as she got out of her own car and into another. Then she tucked that beautiful blonde hair behind her ears and went down on the driver. It was little more than an appetiser, something to whet her appetite maybe, before hitching her skirt up and her underwear down for the main event.

I noticed how she liked to keep her clothes on, slapping away the hands that tried to help her out of them. It didn’t matter; the most beautiful part of her was still on show; her collarbones. I’ve always found them to be one of the most erotic parts of a woman’s body, and hers were so striking. The shape of the cavities between her shoulders and her clavicles, where her fragile bones protruded from her snow-white skin, was simply exquisite. Looking at them made me ache. I liked her shoes too; so much so that I decided to keep them. They are far too small for my feet to be able to wear – more of a souvenir, I suppose.

I saw how her face changed when someone was inside her. Then I closed my eyes, and listened to the sounds two people make when they know they shouldn’t be fucking each other but can’t stop. Like animals in the forest. Fulfilling a basic need without considering the consequences.

But there are always consequences.

I liked the way her face looked afterwards: shiny with sweat despite the cold, some colour on those pale cheeks, and her perfect mouth open a fraction, where she had been literally panting like a Best in Show dog. Lips parted just wide enough to slip a little something inside.

Most of all, I enjoyed the look in her pretty blue eyes just before I killed her. It was an expression I had never seen her face wear before – fear – and it suited her very well. It was as though she already knew that something very bad was about to happen.

Him

Tuesday 07:00

This is very bad.

If anyone ever finds out, they’re going to think it was me, but I’m reasonably confident nobody knew about our arrangement. Every time I see the victim’s body lying in the dirt today, I think about being inside her last night.

Sometimes it felt like I was watching her do the things she did to me, from a distance, as if she were doing them to someone else. I often struggled to believe our affair was real, as though this beautiful woman being interested in me was too good to be true. I guess now, given what has happened, it was. She got into the car, then unzipped my fly without a word and went down on me. After that, she let me do whatever I wanted, and I did, enjoying the small sounds that came out of that perfect mouth.

I had imagined doing those things to her for a very long time.

She was so far out of my league – I suppose deep down I knew it would have to end one day – but from the moment our late-night liaisons began a few months ago, she let me do anything to her. It made little sense to me given how beautiful she was, but I stopped questioning our incompatibility after a while. She was like a drug: the more of her I had, the more I needed to get high.

When a woman like that grabs your attention, they rarely give it back. She came and went like the tide, and I knew sooner or later she’d leave me washed up, but I enjoyed the ride while it lasted.

We both got what we wanted out of the arrangement – sex without the strings. It didn’t mean anything and I think that’s why it worked. No dinners, no dates, no unnecessary complications. She told me she’d got divorced a few months earlier, said he cheated on her. The man was clearly a fool, but then so was I, kidding myself that I was anything more than someone she used in order to feel better about herself. I didn’t mind knowing that was all I was to her. She had a reputation for looking good but being bad; beautiful people do tend to get away with far more than the rest of us. Most of the time. I thought if nobody knew about what we were doing, then nobody could get hurt. I was wrong.

‘Say my name,’ was the only thing she ever said during sex, so I did.

Rachel. Rachel. Rachel.

‘You all right, sir?’

Priya is staring at me, and I wonder if I’ve been talking to myself again. Even worse, she appears to be looking at the scratch on my face, where Rachel left her mark. I’ve never understood why women do that during sex, scratching with their fingernails like feral cats. Hers were always the same: long and pink with fake-looking white tips. I didn’t mind marks on my back that nobody could see, but she caught me on the face last night. I stare down at Rachel’s fingers again now, the nails roughly cut to the quick, and the two words painted on them: TWO FACED. Then I look back at Priya. Seeing my colleague staring at the faint pink scar on my cheek makes me want to run, but I turn away instead.

‘I’m fine,’ I mumble.

I make my excuses and sit in my car for a while, pretending to make calls while trying to warm up and calm down. I turn and stare at the back seat, quickly double-check the floor, but there are no visual signs of Rachel being in here, even though her prints must be everywhere. I lost count of the times and ways we did it in this car. Frankly, it’s as filthy as we were. I’ll get it cleaned later, inside and out, when a suitable time presents itself.

I don’t know what I was thinking getting involved with a woman like her. I knew she was trouble, but perhaps that’s why I couldn’t say no. I guess I was flattered. Meeting up with Rachel was always preferable to going home; there was nothing much there to look forward to after a long day at work. But if people found out, I could lose everything.

It’s still raining. The constant pitter-patter on the windscreen sounds like drums inside my ears. I have a headache at the base of my skull, the kind that can only be cured with nicotine. I’d kill for a cigarette right now, but I gave up smoking a couple of years ago, for the child, not wanting to inflict my poor life choices on an innocent human being. A nice glass of red would make the pain go away too, but drinking before lunchtime is something else I gave up. I consider my options and realise that I have none – best to stick to the plan.

Priya knocks on the window. I contemplate ignoring her, but think better of it and get out of the car, back to cold and wet reality.

‘Sorry to interrupt, sir. Were you talking to someone?’

Just myself.

‘No.’

‘The big boss said he couldn’t get through on your phone,’ she says.

If she meant the words to sound like an accusation, she was successful. I take out my mobile and see eight missed calls from the deputy chief constable.

‘Nothing showing. Either he’s calling the wrong number or I’ve got a bad signal,’ I lie, slipping it straight back inside my pocket. Lying is something I’m pretty good at, to myself as well as others; I’ve had plenty of practice. ‘If he calls back just tell him everything is under control, and I’ll update him later.’ Having some hot-shot superior officer, who is half my age, shit all over my show is the last thing I need right now.

‘OK, I’ll let him know,’ Priya says.

I see her add that to the invisible list of things to do she always writes inside her head. There is clearly something else she wants to tell me, and her face lights up like a pinball machine when she remembers what it is.

‘We think we’ve got a print!’

What?

‘What?’

‘We think we’ve got a print!’ she repeats.

‘Finger?’ I ask.

‘Foot.’

‘Really? In this mud?’

The rain has already made a series of mini rivers across the forest floor. Priya beams at me like a kid who wants to show a parent their latest painting.

‘I think Forensics are super excited to be allowed out of the lab. It looks like a large recent boot print, right next to the body, initially hidden by dead leaves. They’ve done an incredible job! Do you want to see?’

I briefly stare down at my own muddy shoes before I follow her.

‘You know, even if they have managed to find a footprint, I predict it might belong to one of the team. The whole scene should have been properly cordoned off straightaway, as soon as you arrived,’ I say. ‘Including the car park. Any tracks we come across now will be worthless in court.’

The smile fades from her face and I breathe a little easier.

I don’t think anyone knows I was here, or has any reason to suspect my involvement with the murder victim. So as long as it stays that way, I should be fine. My best course of action is to act normal, do my job, and prove that someone else killed Rachel before anyone can point the finger at me. I try to clear my head but my mind is too busy and my thoughts are too loud. The one I hear the most plays on repeat, and right now it’s true: I wish I’d never come back to Blackdown.

Her

Tuesday 07:15

I don’t see the point in trying to get out of going back to Blackdown. It would just raise more questions than I have answers for, so I go home and pack a bag. I don’t intend to stay overnight, but things don’t always go according to plan in this business. It might have been a while, but I haven’t forgotten the drill: clean underwear, non-iron clothes, waterproof jacket, make-up, hair products, a bottle of wine, a few miniatures, and a novel I already know I won’t have time to read.

I put my little suitcase in the back of the car – a red Mini convertible I bought when my husband left me – then climb in and fasten my seat belt; I’m a very safe driver. I was worried I might still be over the limit after last night, but I have my own breathalyser in the glovebox for occasions such as these. I take it out, blow in the tube and wait for the screen to change. It turns green which means I’m good. I don’t need to turn on the sat nav; I know exactly where I’m going.

The journey down via the A3 is relatively painless – it’s still rush hour, and the majority of drivers on the road at this time of day are hurrying towards London, not away from it – but minutes feel like hours with nothing except the same views and anxieties for company. The radio does little to drown them out, and every song I hear seems to make me think about things I’d rather forget. Covering this story is a bad idea, but since I can’t explain that to anyone it doesn’t feel like I have a choice.

The uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach worsens as I take the old familiar turn-off and follow the signs for Blackdown. Everything looks just the same as it always did, as though time stands still in this small corner of the Surrey Hills. A lifetime ago this was the place I called home, but when I look back now, it feels like someone else’s life, not my own. I’m not the same person I was then. I’ve changed beyond recognition, even if Blackdown and its residents haven’t.

It’s still beautiful, despite all the ugly things that I know have happened here. As soon as I turn off the highway, I find myself navigating a series of narrow country roads. The sky soon disappears from view, courtesy of the ancient forest that seems to swallow me whole. Trees that are centuries old lean across a network of sunken lanes, with steep banks of exposed roots on either side. Their gnarly branches have twisted together up above, blocking out all but the most determined shards of sunlight. I focus hard on the road ahead, steering myself through unwanted thoughts, as well as the shadowy tunnel of trees towards the town.

When I emerge from the canopy of leaves, I see that Blackdown still wears its Sunday best every day of the week. Pretty, well-looked-after Victorian cottages stand proud behind neat gardens, moss-covered dry-stone walls, and the occasional white picket fence. The window boxes on neighbouring properties compete with each other all year round, and you won’t find any litter on these streets. I pass the village green, The White Hart pub, the crumbling Catholic church, then I pass the imposing exterior of St Hilary’s. Seeing the girls’ grammar school causes me to step on the accelerator. I keep my eyes on the road again, as though if I don’t look directly at the building, then the ghosts of my memories won’t be able to find me.

I pull into the National Trust car park, and see that my cameraman is already here. I hope they’ve assigned a good one. All the BBC crew vehicles are exactly the same – a fleet of estate cars with an arsenal of filming equipment hidden in the boot – but cameramen and women are all different. Some are better than they think they are at the job. Several are considerably worse. How I look on-screen very much depends on who is filming me, so I can be quite fussy about who I like to work with. Like a carpenter, I think I have a right to choose the best tools with which to cut and shape and craft my work.

I park next to the crew car, still unable to see who is sitting inside. The driver’s seat is fully reclined, as though whoever it is has decided to take a nap. It’s not a great sign. It has been a long time since I was on the road, and staff turnover is high in news, so chances are it could be someone I’ve never worked with. This career path is steep and a little pointy, with not much room at the top. The best people often move on when they realise they can’t move up. I consider the possibility that it might be someone new, but when I get out of my car and take a look inside theirs, I can see that it isn’t.

The window is down – despite the cold and rain – and I see the familiar shape of a man I used to know. He’s smoking a roll-up and listening to eighties music. I decide it’s best to get the awkward reunion out of the way, if that’s what this is going to be. I prefer leaving people I have a history with in the past, but that can be tricky when you work with them.

‘Those things will kill you, Richard,’ I say, getting into the passenger seat and closing the door. The car smells of coffee and smoke and him. The scent is familiar, and not altogether unpleasant. My other senses are less impressed. I ignore my instinctive urge to clean away all the mess that I can see – mostly chocolate bar wrappers, old newspapers, empty coffee cups and crumpled Coke cans – and I try not to touch anything.

I notice that he is wearing one of his trademark retro T-shirts and a pair of ripped jeans, still dressing like a teenager despite turning forty last year. He looks like a skinny but strong surfer, even though I know he has a fear of the sea. His blond hair is long enough to be tied back, but hangs in what we used to call ‘curtains’ when I was at school, haphazardly tucked behind his pierced ears. He is a Peter Pan of a man.

‘We all have to die of something,’ he says, taking another drag. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘Thanks. You look like shit,’ I reply.

He grins and the thick ice is at least cracked, if not broken.

‘You know, you don’t always have to tell it like it is. Especially in the morning. You might have a few more friends if you didn’t.’

‘I don’t need friends, just a good cameraman. Know any?’

‘Cute,’ he says, then taps the ash from his cigarette out of the window, before turning to stare at me. ‘Shall we just get this done?’

There is a slightly menacing look in his eyes, one that I do not remember. But then he gets out of the car, and I realise he just meant the job. I watch while Richard checks his camera – he might not be a perfectionist when it comes to hygiene, but he takes his work seriously – and I feel a wave of gratitude and relief that I’ll be working with him today for so many reasons. Firstly, he can shoot the shit out of any story, and make me look good even when I feel bad. Secondly, I can be myself with him. Almost.

Richard and I slept together a few times when I was a correspondent. It isn’t something that anyone else knows about – we both had good ring-shaped reasons on our fingers to keep it that way – and it isn’t something I’m terribly proud of. I was still married, just, but I was a bit broken. Sometimes I find the only way to ease the worst forms of pain is to damage myself in a different way. Distract my attention from the things that can and will break me. A little hurt to help me heal.

I’d never defend infidelity, but my marriage was over long before I slept with someone I shouldn’t have. Something changed when my husband and I lost our daughter. A small part of us died when she did. But like ghosts who don’t know they are dead, we carried on haunting ourselves and each other for a long time afterwards.

This is a stressful job at the best of times, and in the worst of times we all take comfort where we can. Most news is bad news. There are things I have seen because of my job that have changed me, as well as my view of the world and the people in it. Things I can never unsee. We are a species capable of horrific acts, and incapable of learning from the lessons our own history tries to teach us.

When you witness the horror and inhumanity of human beings close up, every single day, it permanently changes your perspective. Sometimes you just need to look the other way, and that’s all our affair was: a shared need to remember what it is like to feel something. It is not unusual for people in my line of work – half the newsroom seems to have slept with each other – and I sometimes struggle to keep up with the latest staff configurations.

Richard pulls on his coat, and I see a glimpse of a toned stomach as his arms reach for his sleeves. Then he drops his cigarette, extinguishing what is left of it with the sole of his large boot.

‘Coming?’ he asks.

He leaves the tripod behind and we walk towards the woods, no need for sticks in the mud here. I do my best to avoid all the puddles, not wanting to ruin my shoes. We don’t get far. Aside from a couple of snappers, we are the only press to have arrived, but it’s soon made clear that none of us are welcome.

‘Please stay behind the police tape,’ says a petite young woman.

Her clothes are too neat, her vowels are too pronounced, and she reminds me of a disillusioned class prefect. She waves her badge – a little self-consciously, I note – when we don’t respond, as though used to being mistaken for a schoolgirl and having to show ID. I manage to read the name ‘Patel’ but nothing else before she puts it back in her pocket. I smile, but she doesn’t.

‘We’ll be setting up a wider cordon soon. For now, can I please ask that you stay back down in the car park. This is a crime scene.’

The woman has clearly had a charisma bypass.

I can see the lights that have been set up behind her, along with a small army of people dressed in forensics suits, a few of them crouched down over something on the forest floor in the distance. They’ve already put up a tent around the body, and I know from experience that we won’t get another chance to get this close again. Richard and I exchange a silent glance, along with an unspoken conversation. He hits record on the camera and swings it up onto his shoulder.

‘Of course,’ I say, and accompany my off-white lie with a wide smile.

I do whatever I need to do to get the job done. Upsetting the police is never ideal, but sometimes unavoidable. I don’t like to burn bridges, but there tends to be another one – further upstream in this case, I suspect.

‘We’ll just get a couple of quick shots and then get out of your way,’ I say.

‘You’ll get out of the way now, and go back to the car park like she asked you.’

I take in the sight of the man who has come to stand beside the female detective. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a while, appears to have gotten dressed in the dark, and is wearing a Harry Potter-style scarf around his neck. A modern-day Columbo, minus the charm. Richard keeps filming and I stay exactly where I am. This is a familiar dance and we all know the moves – it’s the same steps for any breaking news: get the shot, get the story.

‘This footpath is a public right of way. We are perfectly entitled to film here,’ I say.

It’s the best line I can come up with, a stalling tactic to allow Richard to zoom in and get a few more close-ups of the scene.

The male detective takes a step forward and covers the lens with his hand.

‘Watch it, mate,’ Richard says, taking a step back. He points the camera at the ground.

‘I’m not your mate. Fuck off back to the car park or I’ll have you arrested.’

The male detective glares at me before turning back towards the tent.

‘We’re just doing our jobs, no need to be an arsehole,’ says Richard over his shoulder as we retreat.

‘Did you get the shot?’ I ask.

‘Of course. But I don’t like people touching my camera. We should make a complaint. Get that guy’s name.’

‘No need, already got it. His name is DCI Jack Harper.’

Richard stares at me.

‘How do you know that?’

I think for a second before answering.

‘We’ve met before.’

It’s the truth, just not the whole of it.

Him

Tuesday 08:45

Seeing Anna winds me, not that I plan on telling anyone the truth about that. I replay the encounter in my mind, until it becomes an irritating rerun I could quote line-for-line, and take my frustration out on everyone around me. I wish I had handled it better, but I’m already having the mother of bad days, and she shouldn’t be here. There is a brand-new shirt inside my wardrobe that I could have worn today, had I known I was going to see her. It’s been hanging there for months, but still has the creases from the packet it came in. I don’t know what I’m saving it for – it isn’t as though I ever go anywhere since I moved down here – and now she’s seen me looking like this, with crumpled clothes and a jacket older than some of my colleagues. I pretend not to care, but I do.

The place is swarming with satellite trucks, cameramen, and reporters. I have no idea how the press got hold of the details so soon, including her. It makes no sense. Even if they knew about a body being found, there are several entrances to these woods, which stretch for miles across the valley and surrounding hills – half of which I don’t even know – and there are more than a handful of car parks. So I don’t understand how they knew to come to this one. And Anna was pretty much the first to arrive.

I spot her talking to Priya away from the rest of the press, and resist the urge to march over and interrupt. She’s always known how to make friends out of enemies. I just hope DS Patel isn’t naïve enough to trust a journalist, or say something she shouldn’t, on or off the record. She hands Anna something. The two women smile and I have to strain to see what it is: blue plastic shoe covers. Anna leans on a tree trunk as she pulls them over her high heels. She looks over in my direction and waves, so I pretend not to see and turn away. She must have asked to borrow a pair from the forensics team, so as not to get her pretty reporting shoes dirty in the mud. Unbelievable.

‘I think I know who she is,’ says Priya, appearing by my side and interrupting my internal monologue.

At least, I hope it was internal.

I am aware that I’ve started to actually talk to myself out loud recently. I’ve caught people staring at me in the street when it happens. It mostly seems to occur when I’m overly tired or stressed, and as a middle-aged detective, living with a perpetually unhappy woman and a two-year-old child, I’m pretty much always both. I try to remember if anyone on the team smokes – perhaps I could just ponce one, calm myself down.

Priya is staring at me as though waiting for some kind of response, and I have to rewind my mind to remember what she said.

‘She’s a TV news presenter, that’s probably why you recognise her.’

My words are in too much of a hurry to leave my mouth and trip over themselves. I sound even more ill-tempered than I feel. Priya – who rides my mood swings as though they are her favourite thing in the playground – won’t let the conversation slide.

‘I meant the victim, boss. Not Anna Andrews.’ Hearing someone say her name out loud winds me a second time. I’ve no idea what face I am pulling, but Priya seems to feel the need to defend herself from it. ‘I do watch the news,’ she says, doing that strange thing again, where she sticks out her chin.

‘Good to know.’

‘In terms of the victim, I don’t know her name, yet, but I have seen her around town. Haven’t you?’

Seen her, smelled her, fucked her…

Thankfully Priya doesn’t pause long enough for me to answer.

‘She’s hard to miss, don’t you think? Or was, with the blonde hair and fancy clothes. I’m sure I’ve seen her walking along the high street with a yoga mat. Listening to the rest of the local team, it sounds like she was from here, born and raised in Blackdown. They seem to think she still lived here too, but that she worked in London. For a homeless charity. Nobody seems to remember her name.’

Rachel.

She didn’t just work for a homeless charity, she ran it, but I don’t correct Priya, or tell her that I already know almost everything there is to know about the victim. Yoga was something else that Rachel turned to after her husband turned to someone else. She became a bit obsessed with it, going four or five times a week, not that I minded. That particular hobby had benefits for us both. Apart from meeting me in car parks or the occasional hotel – we never visited each other’s homes or met in public – she didn’t seem to do a lot of socialising unless it was for work. She posted pictures of herself on Instagram with alarming regularity – which I enjoyed looking at when I was alone and thinking of her – but for someone with thousands of so-called friends online, she had surprisingly few in real life.

Maybe because she was always too busy working.

Or perhaps because other people were jealous of her perceived success.

Then again, it might have been because below the beautiful exterior, she had an ugly streak. One that I chose to ignore but couldn’t fail to see.

We’ve established a wide cordon around this particular pocket of the woods now, but it’s as though we’ve put up fly tape, the way the press insists on buzzing around, trying to get a better view. I’ve been told by higher-up-the-food-chain that I should give a statement on camera, and have received a torrent of phone calls and emails – from people I’ve never heard of at HQ – wanting me to approve a line of copy for a police social media account. I don’t do social media, except to spy on women I’m sleeping with, but lately it feels as though the powers that be think it is more important than the job. The next of kin haven’t even been informed yet, but apparently, I’m the one who needs to work on my priorities. My stomach rumbles so loudly I’m sure the whole team hears it. They all seem to be staring at me.

‘Almond?’ asks Priya, waving what looks like a packet of bird seed in my direction.

‘No. Thank you. What I want is a bacon sandwich or a—’

‘Cigarette?’

She produces a packet from her pocket, which is unexpected. Priya is one of those fancy vegetarians – a vegan – and I’ve never seen her pollute her body with anything more dangerous than a single slab of dark chocolate. She’s holding my old favourite brand of smokes in her small hand, and it’s like catching a nun reading an Ann Summers catalogue.

‘Why do you have those?’ I ask.

She shrugs. ‘Emergencies.’

I dislike her a little less than I used to and take one.

I snap it in half – an old habit of mine that makes me think this little stick of cancer will only be half as bad for me – then I let her light it. She’s so small I have to bend down, and I choose to ignore the way her hands tremble as she holds a match in one, and shelters it from the wind with the other. I’ve met former smokers who say that the smell of cigarettes now makes them feel sick. I am not like them. The first cigarette to touch my lips for two years is nothing less than ecstasy. The temporary high causes my face to accidently smile.

‘Better?’ Priya asks.

I notice that she didn’t have one.

‘Yes. Much. Organise that presser. Let’s give the hacks what they want, and hope they all sod off afterwards.’

She smiles too, as though it is contagious.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘I’m not your… never mind.’

Twenty minutes later, minus my Harry Potter scarf, I’m standing in the car park in front of ten or more cameras. I haven’t had to do anything like this for a while, not since I left London. I feel out of practice, as well as out of shape, and unconsciously suck my stomach in before I start to speak. I try to silently reassure my anxious ego that nobody I know will see this. But I’m not as good at lying to myself as I am at lying to others, and the thought brings little comfort. I remember the crumpled clothes I’m wearing; I knew I should have at least shaved this morning.

I clear my throat and am about to speak when I see her, pushing her way to the front. The other journalists look disgruntled until they turn and recognise her face. Then they step aside and let her through, as though reporter royalty has arrived. I’ve experienced enough on-camera pressers and statements in my time to know that most on-screen talent gets treated the same as everybody else. But Anna exudes confidence, even though I know the person on the inside doesn’t match the version she presents to the rest of the world.

Everyone else here seems to be dressed in muted shades of black or brown or grey – as though they deliberately colour-coordinated their clothes with the murder scene – but not her. Anna is wearing a bright red coat and dress, and I wonder if they are new; I don’t recognise them. I avoid looking in her direction, it’s distracting. Nobody here would ever guess that we know each other, and it is in both our interests to keep it that way.

I wait until I have their full attention and the rabble is silent once more, then I deliver my pre-prepared and pre-approved statement. Detectives are no longer permitted to speak for themselves. At least, I’m not. Not after the last time.

‘Early this morning, police received a report of a body being found in Blackdown Woods just outside the village. Officers attended and the body of a woman was discovered not far from the main car park. The woman has not yet been formally identified, and the death is currently unexplained. The area is cordoned off while investigations continue. There will be no further statements from this location, and I will not be answering any questions at this time.’

I would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that this is a crime scene, not an episode of whatever bullshit detective box set you’re watching on Netflix.

I don’t say the last line. At least I hope I didn’t. I start to turn away – we are deliberately not sharing very much with the press or public at this stage – but then I hear her. I’ve always loved listening to the way different people speak, it can tell you so much about them. I don’t just mean accents, I mean everything: the tone, the volume, the speed, as well as the language. The words they choose to use, and how and when and why they say them. The silences between the sentences, which can be just as loud. A person’s voice is like a wave – some just wash right over you, while others have the power to knock you down and drag you into an ocean of self-doubt. The sound of her speaking makes me feel like I’m drowning.

Anna clearly didn’t hear the part about no questions. Or, knowing her, just chose to ignore it.

‘Is it true that the victim was a local woman?’

I don’t even turn to face her.

‘No comment.’

‘You said that the death was currently being treated as unexplained, but can you confirm that this is a murder investigation?’

I’m aware that the cameras are still rolling, but start to walk away. Anna is not a woman who likes to be ignored. When she doesn’t get an answer to her last question, she asks another.

‘Is it true that the victim was found with a foreign object inside their mouth?’

Only now do I stop. I slowly turn to face her, a hundred questions colliding inside my mind as I take in the green eyes that appear to be smiling. The only two people who know about something being found inside the victim’s mouth are DS Patel and me. I deliberately haven’t told anyone else yet – it’s the sort of thing that will leak before I want it to – and Priya is as tight-lipped as a clam. Which leaves me with yet another question I can’t answer: How did Anna know?

Her

Tuesday 09:00

I ignore the stares from the other journalists and hurry back to my car. I’ve forgotten what it is like to stand in the cold for hours on end, and I regret not wearing more layers. Still, at least I look good. Better than Jack Harper at any rate. As soon as I’m inside the Mini, I turn on the engine and crank up the heating to try to warm myself. I want to make a phone call without the whole world listening in, so have asked Richard to grab a few extra shots.

It’s strange to imagine the One O’Clock News team all sitting in the newsroom without me, everything carrying on as normal, as though I were never there. I think I can persuade The Thin Controller to let me get on air with what I’ve already got. Then at least this won’t have been a complete waste of time. Best to go straight to the top for an answer, I think; today’s programme editor suffers from chronic indecision.

Finally, after listening to the phone ring for longer than it ever should when calling a network newsroom, someone answers.

‘One O’Clock News,’ she purrs.

The sound of Cat Jones’ velvety voice causes mine to malfunction.

I picture her sitting in what, only yesterday, was my chair. Answering my phone. Working with my team. I close my eyes and can see her red hair and white smile. The mental image doesn’t make me feel sick, it makes me feel thirsty. My fingers come to the rescue, and automatically start to search inside my bag for a miniature whisky. I open it, twisting the screw cap with my one free hand – I’ve had practice – and down the bottle.

‘Hello?’ says the voice on the other end, in a tone resembling the polite pre-empt people use before hanging up when nobody answers. My reply gets stuck in my throat, as though my mouth has forgotten how to form words.

‘It’s Anna,’ I manage, relieved that I can still remember my own name.

‘Anna…?’

‘Andrews.’

‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognise your voice. Did you want to speak to—’

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Of course. Let me put you on hold and see if I can grab his attention.’

I hear a click before the familiar BBC News countdown music starts to play. I’ve always rather liked it, but right now it’s deeply irritating. I glance outside the window at the rest of the press still standing around. Some of the faces are familiar and everyone seemed genuinely happy to see me, which was nice. I remember that a few of them shook my hand, and reach inside my handbag again, this time in search of an antibacterial wipe for my fingers. I’m about to hang up – tired of being kept on hold – when the sound of shouting in the newsroom replaces the music.

‘Can someone else try answering the goddamn phones when they wing? It weally isn’t difficult, and probably won’t cause wepetitive stwain injury as none of you do it vewy often. Yes, who is it?’ The Thin Controller snaps in my ear.

Despite the job title and bluster, he is a man who is rarely in control of anything. Including his speech impediment. I have often suspected that the newsroom is allergic to his imagined authority, and the chorus of phones still ringing unanswered in the background reinforces the theory.

‘It’s Anna,’ I say.

‘Anna…?’

I resist the urge to scream; forgetting me is clearly contagious.

‘Andrews,’ I reply.

‘Anna! Apologies, it’s chaos here this morning. How can I help?’

It’s a good question. Yesterday I was presenting the programme, now it feels like I’m cold calling to beg to be on it for a minute or two.

‘I’m at this murder scene in Blackdown—’

‘Is it a murder? Hang on…’ His voice changes again, and I realise he is speaking to someone else. ‘I said no to a pwe-pubescent political weporter I’ve never heard of on the PM stowy, it’s the bloody lead. Well, tell the Westminster editor to pull her head out of Downing Street’s arse for five minutes… I don’t care what they are doing for other outlets, I want a gwown-up correspondent on my bulletin, so get me one. You were saying?’

It takes a moment to realise he is speaking to me again. I’m too busy imagining him in a physical, rather than verbal, fight with the five-foot-two Westminster editor. She would end him.

‘The murder you sent me to…’ I persevere.

‘I just thought you’d wather be there than here, given what happened this morning. I did glance at the wires after the police statement. But everything I wead just said it was an unexplained death…’

‘That’s all the police are saying at the moment, but I know there’s more to it than that.’

‘How do you know?’

It’s a difficult question to answer.

‘I just do,’ I say, and my reply sounds as weak as I feel.

‘Well, call me back when you’ve got something on the wecord, and I’ll see if we can squeeze you in.’

Squeeze me in?

‘It’s going to be a big story,’ I say, not ready to give up yet. ‘It would be good to get it on-air before anyone else does.’

‘I’m sowy, Anna. Trump’s latest tweet is causing a meltdown, and it’s already a weally busy news day. Sounds to me like this body in the woods might just be a local news story, and I don’t have woom. Call if that changes, OK? Got to go.’

‘It’s not a—’

I don’t bother to finish my sentence, because he has already hung up. I disappear inside my own darkest thoughts for a while. It’s like Halloween every day in this business – grown adults wearing scary masks, pretending to be something they’re not.

Someone knocks on my window and I jump. I look up, expecting to see Richard standing outside my car, but it’s Jack, and he’s wearing his best disgruntled detective face. He looks just as angry with me as he did the last time we saw each other. I step out to join him, and smile when Jack looks over his shoulder to check if anyone is watching us. He always was slightly paranoid. He’s standing so close that I can smell the stale smoke on his breath. I’m surprised because I thought he had given it up.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asks.

‘My job. It’s nice to see you too.’

‘Since when does the BBC send a presenter to a story like this?’ I regularly tell myself that I don’t care what this man thinks of me, but I still don’t want to tell him that I no longer present the programme. I don’t want to tell anyone.

‘It’s complicated,’ I say.

‘Things always are with you. What do you know and why did you ask that last question after the presser?’

‘Why didn’t you answer it?’

‘Don’t play games with me, Anna. I’m not in the mood.’

‘You never were a morning person.’

‘I’m serious. Why did you ask that?’

‘Is it true then? Was there something inside the victim’s mouth?’

‘Tell me what you think you know.’

‘You know I can’t do that. I always protect my sources.’

He takes a step closer; a little too close.

‘If you do anything to jeopardise this investigation, I will treat you the same way as I would anyone else. This is a murder scene, not Downing Street or some red-carpet film premiere.’

‘So, it is murder.’

His cheeks turn red when he realises his own mistake.

‘A woman we both know has died, show some respect,’ he whispers.

‘A woman we both know?’

He stares at me as though he thought maybe I already knew. ‘Who?’ I ask.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Who?’ I ask again.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to cover this story.’

‘Why? You just said it was someone we both knew, so maybe you shouldn’t be investigating it.’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Sure. Run away like you always do.’

He starts to leave, but then turns back and gets so close his face is right in front of mine.

‘You don’t have to behave like a bitch every time we see each other. It doesn’t suit you.’

The words sting a little. More than I would like to admit, even to myself.

He walks away and I fix a smile on my face until he is completely out of view. Then something strange and unexpected happens: I cry. I hate the way he can still get under my skin, and loathe myself for letting him.

The sound of the car parked next to mine being remotely unlocked startles me.

‘Sorry to interrupt.’

Richard opens the boot, carefully laying his camera inside. I wipe beneath my eyes with the back of my hand, and damp smears of mascara stain my fingers.

‘You OK?’ he asks. I nod and he successfully interprets my silence as a sign that I do not want to talk about it. ‘Do we need to package for lunchtime? If so, we should get on with—’

‘No, they don’t want anything unless the story develops,’ I say.

‘Right. Well, back to London then?’

‘Not yet. There’s more to this story, I just know it. There are some people in town I want to talk to, on my own; your camera will just scare them. I’ll take my car. There’s a nice pub down the road called The White Hart, they do a great all-day breakfast. Why don’t I meet you there a bit later?’

‘OK,’ he says slowly, as though buying time while still selecting his next words. ‘I know you said that you had met the detective before. Did something happen between you once upon a time?’

‘Why? Are you jealous?’

‘Am I right?’

‘Well, you’re not wrong. Jack is my ex-husband.’

Him

Tuesday 09:30

My ex-wife knows more about this than she is letting on.

I don’t understand how, but then I lived with the woman for fifteen years, was married to her for ten of them, and still always struggled to tell the difference between her truth and her lies. Some people build invisible walls around themselves in the name of self-preservation. Hers were always tall, solid, and impenetrable. I knew we were in trouble long before I did anything about it. Truth in my work is everything, but truth in my personal life can feel like a bright light I need to turn away from.

Nobody here knows that I was married to Anna Andrews. Just as I expect nobody she works with knows about me. Anna has always been intensely private, a condition she inherited from her mother. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Don’t ask, don’t tell works for me too when it comes to my life away from the job.

Like a lot of people who have been in a relationship for a long time, we would regularly say ‘I love you.’ I don’t remember exactly why or when it started to lose its meaning, but those three little words turned into three little lies. They became more of a substitute for ‘goodbye’ – if one of us was leaving the house – or, ‘goodnight’ – when we were going to sleep. We dropped the ‘I’ after a while; ‘love you’ seemed sufficient, and why waste three words when you could express the same empty sentiment with two? But it wasn’t the same. It was as though we forgot what the words were supposed to mean. My stomach rumbles loudly and I remember how hungry I am.

When I was a child my mother didn’t let us eat between meals, and sweets were banned from the house. She worked as a receptionist at the local dentist and took tooth decay very seriously. The other kids would all take snacks to school – crisps, candy bars, biscuits – I got an apple, or, on special occasions, a tiny red box of Sun-Maid raisins. I remember the rush of anger I felt whenever I found them in my packed lunch – the box said the raisins came all the way from California, and I realised that even dried fruit had a more interesting existence than eight-year-old me. The most I could hope for was a Golden Delicious, which was a misleading description because in my opinion those apples were neither.

The only time I ever tasted chocolate as a child was when my grandmother came to visit. It was our little secret, and it tasted like a promise. Nothing else I remember from my childhood gave me more unadulterated pleasure than those small brown squares of Cadbury Dairy Milk melting on my tongue.

I eat a chocolate bar every day now. Sometimes two if things are bad at work. No matter which one I buy, or how much it costs, it never tastes as good as the cheap chocolate bars my grandmother used to bring. Even they don’t taste the same. I think when we finally get what we think we want, it loses its value. It’s the secret nobody ever shares, because if they did, we would all stop trying.

Anna and I got what we thought we wanted.

It wasn’t a never-ending supply of chocolate bars, or a private island in the sun. First it was a flat, then a car, then a job, then a house, then a wedding, then a baby. We followed the same safe paths that older generations had carved out for us, trampled into permanence by so many previous footsteps that it was only too easy to follow. We were so certain we were headed in the right direction, we left tracks of our own, to help future couples find their way. But we didn’t discover a pot of golden happiness at the end of the rite-of-passage rainbow. When we finally got where we thought we wanted to be, we realised that there was nothing there.

I think it’s the same for everyone, but as a species we are pre-programmed to pretend to be happy when we think we should be. It is expected of us.

You buy the car you always wanted, but in a couple of years you want a new one. You buy the house of your dreams, but then decide that your dreams weren’t big enough. You marry the woman you love, but then you forget why. You have a baby because that’s next on your list of things to do. It’s what everybody else does, so maybe it will fix the thing that you’ve been pretending wasn’t broken. Maybe a child will make you happy.

And she did for a while, our daughter.

We were a family and it felt different. Loving her seemed to remind us how to love each other. We had somehow made the most beautiful living thing that my eyes had ever seen, and I would often stare in wonder at our baby, amazed that two imperfect people could somehow produce such a perfect child. Our little girl saved us from ourselves for a short while, but then she was gone.

We lost a daughter and I lost my wife.

The truth is that life broke us, and when we finally acknowledged that we didn’t know how to fix each other, we stopped trying.

‘The body has been moved, sir,’ says Priya.

I don’t know how long I have been standing outside the tent in a world of my own. Even if nobody else finds out about last night, I can’t help worrying that Anna somehow knows something. She could always see through my lies.

We both ran away from what happened. She hid inside her work, and I came back here – to a place where I knew she wouldn’t follow me – not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t bear the way she looked at me anymore. Anna never actually blamed me for what happened, at least not out loud. But her eyes said all the things she didn’t. Full to the overflowing brim with hurt and hate.

‘Sir?’ says Priya.

‘That’s good, well done.’

I had deliberately asked the team to move the body from the scene while I was giving the press conference. There are some things that should never be captured on camera.

Priya is still waiting beside me, I’m not sure what for. When I don’t speak, she does, and I find myself staring at her rather than listening. She always looks the same to me: ponytail, old-fashioned hairgrips pinning any stray strands off her face, glasses, shiny lace-up shoes, and ironed blouses or whatever it’s called when a woman wears a shirt. She’s like a walking Marks & Spencer catalogue; lamb dressed as mutton. Not like my ex-wife, who is always so stylish. Anna looks even better now than when we were together, unlike me.

I think maybe solitude suits her. She’s lost some weight, I notice, not that I ever minded. She was never big, even when she thought she was. She used to say that she was a size eleven – always somewhere between a ten and a twelve. Christ knows what she is now… an eight perhaps. Loneliness can shrink a person in more ways than one. Unless perhaps she isn’t lonely.

I always used to wonder about the cameramen Anna went on trips with. She was sometimes away for days at a time, staying in hotels, covering whatever story she had been deployed on as a correspondent. Her job always came first. Then what happened, happened. Anna was broken, we both were. But when she got her lucky break and started presenting, things were better between us for a while. She worked more regular hours and we spent more time together than we had before. But something was missing. Someone. We could never seem to fully find our way back to each other.

It was Anna who asked for the divorce. I didn’t feel like I had any right to argue. I knew she still blamed me for the death of our daughter, and that she always would.

‘I don’t understand how she knew.’

‘Sorry, sir?’ Priya asks, and I realise that I said the words out loud without meaning to.

‘The object inside the victim’s mouth. I don’t understand how Anna could have known about that.’

DS Patel’s eyes look even bigger than normal behind her tortoiseshell glasses, and I remember seeing her and Anna talking before the press conference.

‘Please tell me that you didn’t tell a journalist something which I specifically told you not to?’

‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she says, sounding like a child. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just sort of slipped out. It was as though she already knew.’

I don’t blame Priya, not really. Anna always found the right questions to ask in order to get the right answers. It still doesn’t explain why she is really here though.

I start walking back towards the car park. Priya practically runs beside me, trying to keep up. She’s still apologising, but I’ve tuned out again. I’m too busy watching Anna talk to her cameraman, and I don’t like the way he looks at her. I know men like him; I used to be one. She climbs into the red Mini convertible she bought after the divorce – probably because she knew I’d hate it – and I’m surprised to see that it looks as if she is going to leave. I have never known her to give up easily on a story or anything else. Which makes me wonder where she is going.

I walk a little faster towards my own car.

‘Are you OK?’ DS Patel asks, still chasing after me.

‘I’d be a lot better if other people did their jobs properly.’

‘Sorry, boss.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I’m not your bloody boss.’

I search inside my pockets for my keys as the Mini disappears towards the car park exit. Priya stares at me, in silence for a change, with a hint of defiance in her eyes that I don’t think I’ve seen before. For a moment I worry that even she knows more than she should.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says in that tone of hers that makes me feel old and awful all at once.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just tired. The kid kept me up half the night,’ I lie.

I live with a different woman and child now, but unlike me, the kid never has any trouble sleeping. Priya nods, but still looks unconvinced. I get in the car before she has time to ask where I’m going, willing the damn thing to start as I turn on the engine. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I am doing it. Instinct, I suppose; that’s how I will justify this to myself later. I don’t make a habit of following my ex-wife, but something tells me I should on this occasion. More than that, it feels like I must.

There are always unanswered questions when it comes to Anna.

Why is she really here? Does she already know who the victim is? How did she know the exact location of the murder scene before we told the press? Does she miss me? Did she ever really love me in the first place?

The one about our little girl is always loudest.

Why did she have to die?

There are so many unanswered questions keeping me awake at night. Insomnia has become a bad habit I can’t break. Every day seems to start backwards – I wake up tired and go to bed feeling wide awake. It isn’t the guilt about killing Rachel – it started long before that, and nothing I do seems to help. The sleeping pills the doctor gave me are a waste of time, and I get terrible headaches if I take them with alcohol, which of course I find hard not to do. Wine is always the most reliable crutch when it feels like I might fall.

I do my best to completely avoid doctors if I can. Hospitals are filthy places, and no amount of sanitiser, or handwashing, ever seems to remove the stench of illness and death from my skin after visiting one. Medical establishments are filled with germs and judgement, and I find the people who work in them always ask the same questions, so I always give the same answers: no, I’ve never smoked and yes, I do drink, but in moderation.

There is no law I know of saying that you have to tell your doctor the truth.

Besides, lies told often enough can start to sound true.

My mind tends to wander most when I am in the car, but that’s nothing new, I have always been prone to daydreaming. Not that I’m a danger to myself or others in that regard. I’m a very safe driver, I just do it on autopilot sometimes, that’s all. The roads are mostly empty around here anyway. I wonder if that will change now? It will initially, of course – the police, the media circus – but I wonder what will happen afterwards. When the show is over and all the… mess has been cleared away. Life will surely return to normal for most of the locals. Not those directly affected, of course, but grief is always sharpest at the point of impact. I wonder whether the coachloads of tourists will still come to visit in the summer months? No bad thing if they don’t, if you ask me. Popularity can spoil a place just like it can spoil a person.

I don’t worry about my lack of remorse, but I do question what it means. I wonder whether I am fundamentally a different person from the one I was before I killed her. People still seem to look at me the same way they did yesterday, and when I stare in the mirror, I can’t see any obvious change.

But then maybe that’s because it wasn’t really my first time.

I’ve killed before.

I bury the memory of what I did that night because it still hurts too much, even now. One wrong decision resulted in two ruined lives, not that anyone ever knew what really happened. I never told a soul. I’m sure plenty of people could understand my reasons for killing Rachel Hopkins if they knew the truth about her – some might even thank me – but nobody would ever understand why I killed someone I loved so much.

And they never will because I’ll never tell them.

Her

Tuesday 10:00

There are so many things I never tell people about myself.

Too many.

I have my reasons.

It’s raining again, so hard that it is almost impossible to see the road ahead. Angry fat drops of water relentlessly slap the windscreen, before crying down the glass like tears. I continue to drive until it feels like there is enough distance between me and the crime scene, as well as me and my ex-husband, then I pull over into a layby and sit there for a moment, transfixed by the sight and sound of the wipers:

Swish and scrape. Swish and scrape. Swish and scrape.

Leave this place. Leave this place. Leave this place.

I check ahead and then behind in the rear-view mirror. When I’m satisfied that the road is empty, I down another miniature whisky. It burns my throat and I’m glad. I savour the taste and the pain for as long as I dare, then toss the empty bottle in my bag. The sound of it clinking with the others reminds me of the windchime that used to hang outside my daughter’s nursery. Alcohol doesn’t make me feel better; it just stops me feeling worse. I pop a mint, then blow into the breathalyser, and when my routine self-loathing and self-preservation are complete, I carry on.

On my way back to town I pass the school I used to go to. I see a few girls standing outside, wearing the familiar St Hilary’s uniform that I always hated so much: royal blue with a yellow stripe. They can’t be more than fifteen years old, and they look so young to me now, even though I clearly remember how old I thought I was at their age. Funny how often life seems to work in reverse. We were children masquerading as adults and now we are adults acting like children.

I feel a bit sick as I pull up outside the house, but that’s not because of the drink. I park the Mini a little further down the street so as not to be seen; I’m not sure why. She’s going to know that I’m here eventually. The guilt over how long it has been since I visited this place seems to trap me inside the car. I try to remember when exactly it was that we last saw each other… more than six months this time, I suppose.

I didn’t even visit last Christmas. Not because I had other plans – Jack and I were divorced by then and he was already living with someone else – but because I felt like I couldn’t. I needed to be alone. So, after an afternoon volunteering at a soup kitchen on Christmas Eve, I spent three days locked inside my flat, with nothing but wine bottles and sleeping tablets for company.

When I woke up on December 28th, I didn’t feel any better, but I did feel able to carry on. Which was both a good thing and my best-case scenario. There was a plan B if I hadn’t managed to feel differently about the future, but I flushed that option away and I’m glad. Christmas used to be my favourite time of year, but now it is something that needs to be got through, not celebrated. And the only way I know how to do that is alone.

Sometimes it feels as though I live just below the surface, and everyone else lives above. When I try to be, and sound, and act like they do for too long, it feels like I can’t breathe. As though even my lungs were made differently, and I’m not able, or good enough to inhale the same air as the people I meet.

I lock the car and look up and down the old familiar street. Nothing much has changed. There is a bungalow that has morphed into a house, and a garden that has become a driveway a little farther down the road, but otherwise, everything looks just like it used to. Like it always has. As though perhaps the last twenty years were a lie, a figment of my tired imagination. The truth is, I feel like I’ve been teetering on the edge of crazy town for a while now, but have yet to fully cross the border.

My feet come to a standstill at the last house on the lane, and it takes me a while to look up, as though I am scared of making eye contact. When I do turn to stare at the old Victorian cottage, it looks exactly the same as it always did. Except for the peeling paint on the window frames and ageing front door. The place looking old is new to me. The garden is what shocks me the most: an overgrown jungle of uncut grass and heather. The two lines of lavender bushes on either side of the path have also been neglected; crooked, woody stems reach out like twisted, arthritic fingers, as though to prevent anyone from going in.

Or getting out.

I stare down at the garden gate and see that it is broken and hanging off its hinges. I lift it to one side and navigate my way to the front door, hesitating before ringing the bell. I needn’t have bothered. It doesn’t work, so I knock instead. Three times, just like she taught me all those years ago, so she would know it was me. For a long time, she wouldn’t let anyone else into the house.

When nobody answers, I stare down at the faded welcome mat and see that it is upside down. It’s as if it isn’t for visitors at all, but there instead to welcome her into the real world, should she ever decide to step outside and rejoin it. I silently scold myself, and try to put the unkind thoughts to bed, tucking them in as tightly as possible. Then I see what I’m looking for: a cracked terracotta flowerpot on the doorstep. I lift it up and am a little surprised that she still keeps a key hidden underneath.

I let myself inside.

Him

Tuesday 10:05

I lost her at the second roundabout – she has always driven faster than she should – but it didn’t matter. I had already guessed by then where she was going. I’ll be honest, I was surprised after all this time. As soon as I see her car on the street confirming my suspicions, I pull over a bit further down, turn off the engine and wait.

I’m good at waiting.

Anna looks different from earlier this morning. Still beautiful, with her shiny brown hair, big green eyes, and little red coat, but smaller. As if this place has the power to physically do that to her. She looks more fragile, easy to break.

My ex never did like coming back here, even before our daughter died, not that she would ever talk about it or explain why. After it happened, she stopped going anywhere except the newsroom. Even shopping was something that she would only do online, so that she rarely left the flat except for work.

She couldn’t even bear to say our little girl’s name, and was furious if I ever did, covering her ears as though the sound of it offended them. There are things that have happened in my life – mistakes I have made, people I have hurt – that I seem to have almost completely deleted from my mind. It’s as though the memories were too painful to hold on to, and needed to be erased. But, despite my guilt, my daughter isn’t one of them. I sometimes still whisper her name inside my head. Unlike Anna, I don’t want to forget. I don’t deserve to.

Charlotte. Charlotte. Charlotte.

She was so small and so perfect. Then she was gone.

When you find out you’re allergic to something, the logical thing to do is to avoid it. And that’s what Anna did with her grief. She kept busy at work in public, and in private spent all of her time hiding at home, trying to protect herself from the rashes of fear that seeing other people inflicted on her. She’s learned to hide her anxiety from others, but I know worry makes her world go round.

My stomach starts to grumble and I realise I still haven’t eaten anything today. I usually have a few sugary snacks in the car. If my dead mother knew, I’m sure she would haunt me with a ghostly toothbrush. I open the glove compartment, but instead of the chocolate bar or forgotten biscuits I’d been hoping to find, I see a pair of black, lacy knickers. I’m guessing they must have belonged to Rachel – women taking their clothes off in my car is not a regular occurrence – though I’ve no idea how they got in there.

I reach inside the glove compartment again and spot some Tic Tacs. They remind me of Anna – she always had little boxes of mints – and while they won’t do much to satisfy my hunger, they’re better than nothing. I shake the small plastic box, then flip open the lid and tip a few out. But the white shapes are not mints. I stare at the thick fingernail clippings on the palm of my hand and think I’m going to be sick.

A car door slams down the street. I throw the underwear and the Tic Tac box back inside the glove compartment, slamming it closed seconds afterwards, like a nervous echo. As though if I can’t see them, they were never really there.

Someone knows I was with Rachel last night, and now they are fucking with me.

I can think of no other explanation, but who?

I stare out of the car window and watch Anna’s every move. She took her time getting out of the car, despite her rush to get here. I can’t help thinking it’s because she is afraid of what she might find behind closed doors. I sympathise with that because she is right to be.

I know what is waiting for her inside that house, because I go there all the time.

I even had my own key cut.

Not that either of them knew.

Her

Tuesday 10:10

I should have known it would be like this.

There is a pile of unopened mail behind the door, making it difficult to open. I close it behind me as soon as I’ve managed to squeeze through the gap, but discover it’s just as cold inside the house as it was out on the street. My eyes try to adjust to the gloom – it is difficult to see – but the thing I notice first, and most, is the smell. It’s as though something has died in here.

‘Hello?’ I call, but there is no answer.

I hear the familiar murmurs of a television at the back of the house, and don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about it. The roman blinds are all down, with just a sliver of winter sun trying to backlight their elderly cotton edges. I remember that they were all homemade, over twenty years ago. I try the light switch but nothing happens, and when I squint up into the darkness, I can see that there is no bulb.

‘Hello?’ I call again.

When nobody answers a second time, I pull the cord on the blind to raise it just a little, and am engulfed in a cloud of dust, a million tiny particles dancing in the beam of light that floods the room. I turn to see that what was once a homely lounge is now empty, except for cardboard boxes. Lots of them. Some are stacked precariously high and leaning to one side, as though they might topple over at any moment. Each has been labelled with what looks like a thick black felt-tip pen, and my eyes are drawn to the box in the farthest corner that says ANNA’S THINGS.

Coming here always feels wrong, but none of this feels right.

It doesn’t make any sense – my mother would rather die in this house than leave it – it’s something we used to frequently argue about before we stopped talking altogether. My hands start to shake, just the way they did when I lived here. Not that any of that was her fault; she didn’t even know. I was a different version of myself then, one that I doubt many people would like or recognise. Home is not always where the heart is. For people like me, home is where the hurt lives that made us into who we are.

My mother was always fond of boxes, but not all of them were real. When I was a little girl, she taught me how to build them in my head, and hide my worst memories inside. I learned to fill them with the things I most wanted to forget, so that they were locked away and hidden in the darkest corners of my mind, where nobody, including me, would ever look. I tell myself the same thing I always do when I come here:

You are more than the worst thing you’ve ever done.

I feel a familiar pain in the back of my head, which starts to throb in time with my heartbeat. It’s the kind of fast-accelerating agony that can only be cured with alcohol, and the need to do so takes over everything else. I reach inside my bag and find a half-empty blister pack of painkillers. I pop two inside my mouth, then search for a miniature to wash them down with.

They’re not as hard to come by as they used to be – miniatures – and I no longer have to steal them from flights or hotels. I have my favourites: Smirnoff vodka, Bombay Sapphire gin, Bacardi and, for a special sweet treat, Baileys Irish Cream. But quality Scotch tends to be my number one choice, and there are a wide variety of those available in teeny-tiny bottles now – even with next-day delivery online. All small enough to fit discreetly inside any pocket or purse. I twist the lid off the first one I find in my bag, and drink it down like medicine; vodka this time. I don’t bother popping a mint afterwards. Parents know their children, even the bad ones.

‘Mum!’ My voice sounds just the same as it did when I was a child when I say her name.

But there is still no answer.

‘Plenty big enough for the two of us’ was how she described this tiny cottage when I was still here. As though she had forgotten that there used to be three of us living in the house. I can still hear her saying it now inside my head, along with all the other lies she told to try to stop me from leaving.

It’s a brick-built Victorian two-up two-down, with an extension tagged on the end like a twentieth-century afterthought. Our house always used to look like a nice home, even when it stopped feeling like one. Not anymore. I squeeze past the stacks of boxes, until I reach the door that leads to the rear of the building. It squeaks in protest when I open it, and the smell is considerably worse. It hits the back of my throat, and I gag when my mind speculates on what might be causing it.

I pass the stairs, walk through what still resembles a dining room – despite the boxes on the table – and do my best not to trip over anything in the dark. I spot Mum’s old record player on the dresser in the corner, covered in a thick layer of dust. Even when I tried to introduce her to cassettes and CDs, she insisted on sticking with vinyl. I caught her sometimes, dancing around the room with her arms held out, as though she were waltzing with an invisible man.

I reach the kitchen, turn on the light, and my hand automatically comes up to cover my mouth. Dirty plates coated in uneaten food, along with half-drunk cups of tea, litter every available surface. There are a couple of lazy-looking flies, buzzing around what might once have been a microwaveable lasagne. It is not like my mother to eat ready meals. She rarely ate anything we didn’t grow in our own garden, and would rather go hungry than eat fast food.

The smell is a little overwhelming now. When I manage to look up from all the filth and mess in the kitchen, I see the glow of the TV out in the conservatory right at the back of the house. It’s the place where she always most liked to sit, with the best view of her beloved garden.

I see her then, sitting in her favourite armchair in front of the television, a bag of knitting on the floor by her side. My mother always preferred making things herself: food, clothes, me. Years ago, she helped me knit a Harry Potter scarf for Jack. It was strange and surreal to see him still wearing it today.

I take a step closer and see that she is smaller than I remembered, as though life has made her shrink. Her grey hair has thinned and there are hollow shapes where there used to be rosy cheeks. The clothes she is wearing look dirty and too big, and the buttons on her cardigan are done up incorrectly, so that one side of the white bobbled material looks longer than the other. It’s covered in faded embroidered bees, and I remember buying it for her a long time ago – a last-minute birthday present. I’m surprised she still has it. I glance at the TV screen and see that she has been watching the BBC News Channel, as though hoping to catch a glimpse of me in the background. I knew she did that, but to see it makes me feel even worse than before.

She isn’t watching now.

Her eyes are closed and her mouth is slightly open.

I take a step closer, and memories I locked away a long time ago start to stir. I shake my head, as though trying to silence them before they get too loud. It isn’t just the mess in the kitchen that stinks, it’s her. She smells of body odour, piss, and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. Or am choosing not to.

‘Mum?’ I whisper.

She doesn’t answer.

Memories are shapeshifters. Some bend, some twist, and some shrivel and die over time. But our worst ones never leave us.

‘Mum?’ I say her name a little louder, but she still doesn’t answer or open her eyes.

I have rehearsed my mother’s death in my imagination for years. Not because I wanted her to die; it was just something that happened from time to time inside my head. I don’t know whether other daughters do that too – it isn’t the sort of thing people talk about – but now that it might be happening for real, I know I’m not ready.

I reach out, then hesitate before touching her hand. When I do, her fingers are icy cold. I lean down, until my face is next to hers, trying to see whether she is breathing. Despite the pills, the pain in my head is so bad now that I briefly close my eyes, and it feels as though I fall back in time.

I hear a scream and it is several seconds before I realise that it is my own.

Him

Tuesday 10:10

My own memories of this place in the past invade my present.

I watch Anna stand outside the house she grew up in, and it’s as though the years fall away and I’m seeing a little girl. I could get out of the car right now and stop her, but I don’t. Sometimes you have to let things play out, no matter how unpleasant. I already know what she is going to find inside, and I feel horrible about it. I also know that she has her own key, but watch as she bends down to take the spare one from under the flowerpot, before disappearing behind the peeling front door.

The cottage used to be beautiful, but, a bit like the woman inside, it has not aged well. Anna’s mother was a woman who knew how to make a house a home, and it was always by far the nicest cottage on the lane. Picture perfect. At least on the outside. People used to actually stop and take photos because it looked like a doll’s house with its pretty little garden, window boxes and white picket fence. Nobody stops to take photos of it anymore.

But, back then, she was so good at cleaning, tidying and making a place feel cosy, that she did it for a living. Anna’s mum cleaned for half the village for over twenty years – including the house where I live now – and she didn’t just clean. She’d buy scented candles and flowers and leave them in people’s homes. Occasionally she’d bake a batch of brownies and leave them on the kitchen table. She even babysat my sister from time to time too. Sometimes, it was just the way she made the bed, or plumped the pillows, but you always knew when Mrs Andrews had paid a visit. She was never short of work or references.

I wait in the car. When nothing happens, I wait a little longer, but then the familiar mix of boredom and anticipation distracts me, and I get out to stretch my legs. I walk along the street, keeping an eye on the house, then stop to examine Anna’s Mini. There is nothing out of the ordinary about it – aside from the garish red colour – there are no dents, no marks, no scratches. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. I guess sometimes in my line of work – as well as in life – you don’t always know what you’re looking for until you find it.

And then I do.

I see a pay-and-display car park ticket with a familiar National Trust logo on the floor of the passenger seat. Discarded and slightly crumpled, the small square of printed white paper doesn’t seem like anything of significance at first. I know she parked outside the woods this morning – I was there, I saw her. But I’m surprised that anyone in the media would have paid any attention to the parking meter, given the circumstances. I’m sure the National Trust was far more concerned with a body being found on its property, than a few people forgetting to pay and display.

I stare at it a while longer, without knowing why, as though my eyes are patiently waiting for my brain to catch up with what they have seen. Then I check my watch before looking back at the ticket one last time. The date. It isn’t today’s. I push my face right up against the car window, squinting inside until I am absolutely sure of what I see. According to that little square of black-and-white paper, Anna visited the car park where the body was found yesterday.

I look up and down the street as though wanting to share this information with another human being, to have them verify that it is real.

Then I hear a woman scream.

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