Fran is sitting on the sofa in the living room, her hands on her knees and a sick taste in her mouth. The police officer sitting beside her is writing something in a notepad. Periodically, she pauses and asks Fran if she’s feeling okay. Each time she asks, Fran says yes.

Everything happened so quickly after she made the 999 call. She rushed upstairs to see if she could be of any help and found Tom cradling Kate in his arms. He’d bound a towel around her midriff, but it was soaked in blood. Kate’s eyes were still closed and her skin was grey.

‘Is the ambulance coming?’ Tom met Fran’s eyes. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood.’

‘Yes, it’s coming.’ She didn’t mention the police. Instead, she glanced at Renata, sitting on the floor, her back against the radiator, her knees pulled to her chest and her face buried in her arms.

‘Tom.’ Still watching Renata, Fran drew closer. The smell of the blood, metallic and strong, made her stomach turn.

‘Where’s the knife?’ She kept her voice low.

‘I kicked it under the bed.’

‘How’s Kate?’

‘Her pulse is weak but she’s holding on.’

‘Are you going to be okay in here? If I go downstairs to wait?’

He nodded. ‘I don’t think’ – he inclined his head in Renata’s direction – ‘she’s going to try anything. Not now.’

Looking at the frail creature, curled into herself by the window, Fran couldn’t imagine her driving a knife into Kate’s stomach. Then again, she couldn’t imagine such a small, light girl wielding a poker or smashing a rock into Jenna’s head. The thought – of her sister’s skull being smashed in – made her stomach clench violently and she tasted bile at the back of her throat.

‘Renata?’

Tom looked at Fran warningly but she ignored him. Once the police turned up Renata would be arrested. She might never get this chance again.

‘Renata, what happened after you hit Jenna with the rock?’

Renata didn’t lift her head, didn’t speak, didn’t move. She gave no indication she’d even heard Fran at all.

‘What happened after you hit Jenna? Where did you put her body?’

Still nothing. A nerve twitched in Fran’s eyelid and she rubbed at it irritably. Renata didn’t get to do this. She didn’t get to sob her heart out about Kate and keep quiet about Jenna. She didn’t get to pretend that Jenna’s death meant nothing at all. Fran walked slowly around the bed. She stopped a foot away from Renata and looked down at her.

‘WHAT DID YOU DO?’

Renata flinched and hugged her knees more tightly, refusing to look up.

‘Fran,’ Tom said softly. ‘Fran—’

‘This isn’t about you.’

‘Fran, the police are here.’