Amy shrugged. ‘Any of you ever slept on the street? It’s fucking awful, you can’t imagine how bad. I only did it for a few days and I wanted to kill myself. Then I got thinking. All those big posh houses I delivered post to. Some of them were probably empty. So I started retracing my routes, checking out the houses. But most have good security, full of families. Then I remembered you, Jacob.’

She swallowed and pulled on her earlobe.

‘I knew you lived here alone, you told me. We always chatted at the door if I had a parcel that was too big for the letterbox. And you weren’t very mobile, probably didn’t use half of the house. Plus you were, you know, nice. Harmless. So I just thought, why not?’

‘But how did you get in?’

‘I knew you didn’t lock the front door during the day. And I remembered you moaning that you kept falling asleep in front of the television. I just came by a few times, sneaked a look in the window. Waited till you were asleep, walked right in and up the stairs.’

Thomas folded his arms. ‘When was this?’

Amy ran her tongue around the inside of her cheek, thinking. ‘Three months ago.’

Jacob’s eyes were wide. ‘You’ve been living in my attic for three months?’

She shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

‘I have a question,’ Dorothy said, watching her closely. ‘How did you think this was going to end?’

Amy shook her head. ‘I didn’t think that far ahead. I was just staying off the street.’ She finally took a sip of her tea and looked around at the three of them.

‘So, how does it end?’ she said.

281

54

HANNAH

Hannah stared at the mess of Mel’s room. Mel was never coming home, why bother making things neat? The drawers were still piled on the floor, their contents strewn all over the place. Forensics had taken away a few items in plastic bags, but they had refused to tell her what the items were, or why they were taking them.

She righted the bedframe and flopped the mattress on top, then slumped down with a sigh, lay down on Xander’s bag of Mel’s clothes that she’d dumped in here earlier, before all that nuts stuff with Jacob Glassman. She stared at the ceiling and wondered what Mel was thinking last time she was in this bed. Was she fucking Xander, lost in an orgasm, or thinking about Peter Longhorn? Or this third guy. Maybe she was worried that the third guy was dangerous. She was pregnant but hadn’t told anyone, so maybe that was preying on her mind. Maybe she wanted to tell the father, and she wondered how that would go. Did she want to keep it, get rid of it, give it up for adoption? You never got answers once someone was dead.