She slipped the second photo out from behind the first with her thumb, and screamed.

Bobby wasn’t smiling anymore. His eyes were rolled back in his head, unseeing.

And the rest was all red.

Red.

So.

Much.

Red.

She stared. Her hands shook. She gently laid the photograph on the bathroom floor, and hung her head between her knees, trembling.

This was the proof that she had been lacking.

Her brain ticked over like an over-heated engine, straining to work through the implications of this image, and two things swam to her, slowly:

X knew where she lived, which meant he was following her, stalking her. He hadn’t grown bored of the game. He hadn’t given up.

And this...

This picture was evidence.

And Bobby was dead.

Really, truly, without a doubt, dead.

X knew where the body was. The letters were, after all, confessions, and not just crazy ramblings.

Laura felt her stomach cramp, felt something hot surge up from inside. She kicked the photos to one side and vomited onto the bathroom floor. The sickness was a replacement for tears: instead of crying, she evacuated her stomach and then panicked, cursing herself for almost destroying the only piece of evidence she had proving Bobby’s fate.

On autopilot, she carefully retrieved the pictures, and checked to see if they were damaged whilst trying not to look at the images within. Then she wiped her face with a tissue and made her way unsteadily to her bedroom, where she raided her drawers for all the other letters she’d kept over the years. Despite everything, she’d never been able to bring herself to throw them away, feeling somehow that the letters were an unpleasant but vital part of her, and not something she could dispose of lightly.

She collected them into a bundle, stuffed everything into a handbag, jammed her shoes onto her feet, and started walking to the Police station.

The whole way there, all she could see was red.

I made a mistake, she thought, miserably.

Bobby is dead.

I made a mistake.

This is all my fault.

She recalled with horror how she hadn't taken the letters to the Police out of fear. Fear that she wouldn’t be believed. Fear that she’d been tricked. So much time, wasted. And here she was, years later, with a definitive, unspeakable answer to the question of what had happened to Bobby. Answers for Mr. and Mrs. Eveleigh. How much more would they hate her now? More than they already did? Was that even possible?

Oh, Bobby. So much red in your hair.

She was only two streets away from the station when she heard heavy footsteps running close behind her. She turned, but too late: a huge hand clamped over her eyes. Her feet were kicked out from beneath her. She fell to the ground, and knew, suddenly, what was happening: she’d been followed.

By X.

Her handbag, containing the letters and the photos, was ripped from her shoulder. A tall, dark presence loomed over her. The hand over her eyes disappeared. As she blinked, it reappeared once again, only this time it was a fist, and it hit her squarely in the centre of her nose. Something cracked, and the heavy feet thumped away. The man, his fist, her handbag, the letters, and the photos were all gone.