Unable to think straight, I wait by a wall at the end of the road. Burnt by the truth. I don’t feel like I’m not me, that I’m any different to the girl I was last week, and yet I know I am. Everything that has gone before is nothing now, all lies. Did she love me? I know she did. I felt it every day. Saw it in her smile, in the care she gave me, the advice she gave me when I got older. How was she able to do that? Knowing I was someone else’s kid. Knowing she’d stolen me. Was she able to blank out the truth? Put it in some box at the back of her mind that she never opened? She must have, because she didn’t seem to worry about it. Not that I noticed, anyway. She never slipped up. Not once. I see her now, her smile, her bright eyes, her shiny dark hair falling around her shoulders. I feel her kissing my cheek. Good morning, baby.

Maybe I should have gone inside, said my goodbyes, but as I deliberate, Jeff pulls up alongside, distracting me from my weakening resolve. I get in, put on the seatbelt and say nothing. He glances from the road ahead, to me, and back again.

‘What’s going on, Becca?’

I feel drained, unable to answer. All I want to do is sleep and yet I know, deep in my heart, that I’ll never sleep soundly again.

Chapter Fifty

By the time we get back to the apartment I’ve told Jeff the whole story. His face, one of true concern, is unfamiliar to me. He suggests I lie down on the bed for a few minutes to rest my head. The minutes turn into hours. When I eventually wake up the room is dark. I stumble out to where Jeff is waiting with a bottle of wine, he beckons me to sit with him at the coffee table.

‘It’s true Jeff, all fucking true.’ After emptying my glass in one gulp I grab the bottle and fill it again, all the way to the top.

‘What the hell?’ he says.

‘What the hell is right.’

‘So now there’s two bodies.’

‘What?’ Pulling my feet onto the sofa, a cold wave shivers down my spine. It’s not the wine, it’s the past. Katie Collins’ killer is still out there. We let that elephant sit between us on the couch for a while until eventually Jeff says, ‘Do you think it was Danny?’

‘Danny?’

‘If everything he told you is true, then he’s the only one with anything to hide, the only one Katie Collins posed a threat to.’

I’m thinking the same.

‘Your mom couldn’t have done it,’ Jeff says, ‘so…’

The wine swimming through my head begins to muddle my thought process.

‘So you think Danny is Katie Collins’ killer?’