“Where is Megan?” I ask once more and watch the flicker of pity cross the man’s face. Yep, they have definitely found her.

“Can we take your statement first, Leah?” His voice is gentle, the way you would talk to a slightly unhinged great-aunt at a wedding sitting legs akimbo as the older children laugh that you can see her underwear. I nod, shoulders sagging as if I can feel the weight of the answer he might give me. I follow him down the corridor to the interview room.

The victim suite—actually I doubt that’s its proper name but I’m assuming the room, decked out like a plush lounge, is never used to interrogate suspects—is bathed in soft light from a few strategically placed lamps, the comfortable furniture muffling the sound of my story finally being told in full.

The nice detective from the hospital is here again, but this time she has her boss with her. At least, I assume he is her boss. And possibly her lover, going by the stolen glances and secret smiles. Although heaven forbid that you could listen to the stories told within these walls and then want to go home with someone who heard the same ones; I would think the only way to stay sane in this job would be to totally divorce work from home.

“This is DCI Rosenmeyer interviewing Leah Patterson on Saturday, the sixth of June, 2020.”

“And this is DS Fonteyn in support,” the female detective adds, leaning in to the recorder to ensure that her own part in this is placed on the record.

I would be pissed off at his rudeness, but the resigned way she leant forward tells me this is something she is forced to do every time. I think there will be parts of the interview that I will only tell her directly. Make sure she stays involved every step of the way. We women have to look out for each other, after all.

“So, Leah.” DCI Rosenmeyer—or Jimmy, as he has previously instructed me to call him—gives me an encouraging smile. “Can you tell us what happened? Start right back at the beginning.”

“When is the beginning?” I ask.

“When do you think it is?”

I pause. Was it when Chris approached Megan on the train that first time? When they had married? When he started an affair with his wife’s sister? When one twin ended up dead? In my head I have practiced this speech one hundred times into the darkness as Chris lay comatose next to me. I always started my story on the first day of lockdown. But that’s not really where this all began, even in this fucked-up version I’m spinning. So, I leave my careful script to one side and begin to just talk.

“My sister and I have always had a fractured relationship. You hear so many stories of twins, so much crap about soulmates and two halves of the same person and best friends for life. Do either of you,” I wave my hand in the direction of both detectives, “know what it’s like for the world to think you are only half of a person? That your sibling is just another part of you, and you of them in return? To live your life praying that when someone asks, ‘Which one are you?’ they won’t be disappointed when you tell them?” They both shake their heads. Not that the odds were favorable to either being an identical. “It can cause friction.” I flash a small smile. “Nothing major, but the normal sibling rivalries get amplified. Competitions intensify. Megan and I had got to a point where we didn’t really speak much. I think we’d both spent so much time trying to be different, to be our own person rather than one half of a whole, that we had ended up too far apart to see eye to eye.”