“How about with anyone else?”

“No. Like who? This isn’t exactly something you tell your flatmates. And I don’t want my mum to know. Ever.”

“Do you have any proof that you’re right? Anything Jenny’s said, anything you’ve seen? Or is it just instinct?”

“No. No proof. If I’m wrong, I’ll be—God, I’d be so happy.”

I said, “I don’t think you’re wrong. But here’s the problem: I don’t have proof either. Jenny’s confession to me can’t be used in court. The evidence we’ve got isn’t enough to arrest her, never mind convict her. Unless I can get something more, she’s going to walk out of here a free woman.”

“Good.” Fiona caught something in my face, or thought she did, and shrugged wearily. “What do you expect? I know probably she should go to prison, but I don’t care. She’s my sister; I love her. And if she got arrested, my mum would find out. I know I’m not supposed to hope someone gets away with this, but I do. There you go.”

“And what about Conor? You told me you still care about him. Are you seriously going to let him spend the rest of his life in prison? Not that it’ll be long. Do you know what other criminals think of child-killers? Do you want to know what they do to them?”

Her eyes had widened. “Hang on. You’re not going to send Conor to jail. You know he didn’t do this.”

“Not me, Ms. Rafferty. The system. I can’t just ignore the fact that I’ve got more than enough evidence to charge him; whether he’s convicted or not is up to the lawyers, the judge and the jury. I just work with what I’ve got. If I’ve got nothing on Jenny, then I’ll have to go with Conor.”

Fiona shook her head. “You won’t do it,” she said.

That certainty rang in her voice again, clear as struck bronze. It felt like a strange gift, warm as a tiny flame, in this cold place where I would never have expected to find it. This woman I shouldn’t even have been talking to, this woman I didn’t even like: for her, of all people, I was certainty.

“No,” I said. I couldn’t make myself lie to her. “I won’t.”

She nodded. “Good,” she said, on a small tired sigh.

I said, “Conor isn’t the one you should be worrying about. Your sister’s planning to kill herself, first chance she gets.”

I made it as brutal as I could. I expected shock maybe, panic, but Fiona didn’t even look around; she kept staring off down the corridor, at the dingy posters proclaiming the saving power of hand sanitizer. She said, “As long as she’s in the hospital, she won’t do anything.”

She already knew. It hit me that she could actually want it to happen—as a mercy, like Richie had, or as punishment, or out of some ferocious sister-tangle of emotions that not even she would ever understand. I said, “So what are you planning to do when they let her out?”