Life improved, and she was allowed to live like this for twelve months. During that time, she convinced herself that X had taken the hint, given up, moved on. Perhaps she’d scared him away with her own letter. Perhaps it had been a wake-up call: she was onto him. Perhaps he had grown equally as tired of the game as she had. A beautiful silence reigned, and breathing became easier, every day that passed. Her birthday approached, and she thought, finally, that this one might pass with no yellow envelope.

I won, she thought. All I had to do was stop playing.

But she was wrong.

17.

Twelve months. Another year travelling around the sun.

No yellow envelope.

Heart singing, she went to work, and ate the cheap sponge cake her colleagues had bought to mark the occasion. The shift passed quickly, and she returned home at four in the morning, looking forward to a good sleep.

Looking forward to the rest of her life.

Until she found her bathroom window shattered, and glass all over the floor.

Lying amongst the splinters, she found a brick. Attached to the brick with gaffer tape was an envelope. Same yellowish paper, same slanted, angry writing. Presumably, the same word vomit on the same cruel, malignant subject matter.

How had he found her?

She stared at the mess in silence, then boarded up the broken window as best she could with a sheet of cardboard, and went to bed, leaving the envelope where it was, taped to the brick on the floor.

Her dreams were dark, and endless.

When she woke, she thought about throwing the letter away, unread, or better still, burning it. But she didn’t. Whether from guilt at her short-lived happiness and peace, or addiction, or from being conditioned by him over the years to receive his instructions, regardless: she found herself sitting on the closed lid of her toilet, finger sliding beneath the grubby, saliva-rippled envelope flap, and inside, there was no letter, only a photograph.

No. Two photographs.

The first was of Bobby, of course it was. Fresh faced, wearing the school uniform he’d been wearing the day he disappeared. His hair, in long blonde curtains, was tucked back behind his ears, a style she’d never seen on him before, and she’d known him since he was a baby. He was smiling hesitantly into the camera, although the smile looked brittle, forced. He had his arm around someone, an older man, a large man with huge shoulders and a dark blue t-shirt, a man she presumed was X. She couldn’t see his face, because he had cut it out of the photo, leaving behind a precise little hole through which she could poke her index finger.

On the bottom right of the photo a digital readout was stamped in orange type: the time and date it was taken. The same day that Bobby had disappeared. Five hours, in fact, after she’d seen him drive off in the van.