Upstairs, when I open my drawer I immediately spot my blue ‘Chicago Bulls’ sweatshirt I like to lounge around the house in. I was convinced this was taken from the washing line earlier, and now I’m not so sure anything is missing. Had I imagined it? Is the stress of caring for a sick child, the guilt of everything that came before, causing me to lose my grip on reality? Or am I just so tired I’ve begun to see things that aren’t there? I shed my clothes and my earlier certainty that someone is tormenting me.

It’s so gloomy. I’m about to draw the curtains when I see it outside. The white car. The sight of it is a short, sharp shock bringing back into focus all of the things I had believed. I take a step backwards, my hands over my mouth.

The footprints in the mud.

The missing clothes.

The sense of being watched.

It’s real. All of it.

‘Aidan?’ I shout.

I step forward again, back to the window. To let the person know that I know they are outside.

That I’m not scared.

Even though I am.

But the car has gone now and I doubt myself again. Had it really been there at all?

‘Did you call me?’ Aidan asks from the doorway, a creep of impatience in his voice.

‘No. Sorry. It’s okay.’

He heads back downstairs.

Full of a sense of foreboding, I put my hand across my chest and press against it, trying to slow the frantic pounding of my heart.

Is the car connected to what happened before the summer? With what happened years ago?

It’s all getting mixed up in my mind but there’s one common dominator in all of the tragedy that has occurred.

Me.

I am to blame and someone is coming for me.

I know it.

Chapter Sixteen

Connor

Eleven days before Connor is taken

Mum is acting weird this morning. She’s in the kitchen counting the items of clothes in the laundry basket and then counting the pegs she’d thrown haphazardly on top of the washing when she fetched it in last night. She’s counted everything three times now, a confused expression on her face.

Connor scatters cornflakes into a bowl – Mum stopped buying Frosties when Kieron first got sick like Tony the Tiger had something to do with it – and then he drenches them in milk, coats them in sugar.

When he’s finished, he stacks his bowl in the lower part of the dishwasher knowing that Mum will move it to the upper part later. It’s a small victory. But then the enormity of what happened to Hailey slams into him once more and he knows that doing his chores the wrong way won’t make the slightest bit of difference.

Dad wanders into the kitchen. Looks vacantly around as though he hasn’t seen the room before.