Hurt and betrayal twisted my mother’s fine features. She hadn’t doubted me, I realised. I’d lied so easily. I’d crashed Dad’s car, limped, sore and guilty, back to town and climbed in the window, although it hurt. She hadn’t known, hadn’t noticed my stiffness, had been too distracted to notice the small cut on my cheek, easily hidden by hair. Or perhaps she had noticed, and thought I’d been fighting my brothers. She’d made me agree that I’d been in all night—I’d been willing, afraid what would happen when they learned I’d written off the car—and help her. Help her! The smell of incense and raw meat in the house … I wondered, distantly, what manner of advice she had received in those letters with their mysterious stamps. The sap of lemons welcome on my hand when I went to help her plant the new trees in the garden. I’d been so eager to forget.

Standing with the cold dirt of the track silting into my shoes, I took Chris’s knife out of my pocket. The blade was dull under the apricot sky, crusted with blood—mine and Chris’s.

“Now—” began Sergeant Aberdeen.

“Do you recognise this?” I asked my mother. “Dad never went anywhere without it.” The scratching on the red plastic casing—D S, the D flat-bottomed, as if altered from another letter—was worn almost smooth against my palm.

“Where did you find it?” Panic unfurled in her eyes. “You found it here? Winston.” She turned to Sergeant Aberdeen as if he were the sun. “Could Darryl have come this way?”

“Chris had it,” I said. I touched my ruined neckline. The seeping cut that began at my collarbone was not, perhaps, so deep as I’d thought. “He tried to cut my heart out.”

I saw realisation in her eyes and added, “I wonder where he got that idea.”

“Gary Damson,” said Sergeant Aberdeen. “Can you cast any light on this?”

“Family matters, sir,” said Gary, rallying a note of respectful insolence. “You know Damsons don’t get involved.”

“I crashed Dad’s car that night,” I said to Sergeant Aberdeen. “I walked back into town and climbed in the window.” Bruises spilling hydrangea-blue across my chest and stomach. “However my dad left, Sergeant Aberdeen, he didn’t drive. And my brothers have been living here. We frightened them and”—I looked hard at Trish’s father, telling him the truth so he would believe it—“Chris and Mitch have gone.”

“Their ute is here,” said Sergeant Aberdeen, gesturing toward the house.

“Then wherever they went,” I said, firmly, “they didn’t drive.”

“Bettina,” said my mother, her gentle voice strained. “Sergeant Aberdeen can ask you about this tomorrow, can’t he? You’re excitable. Come home where everything is pretty and neat, and tidy yourself up, and all will be well, won’t it?”