The court is adjourned a few minutes before five p.m. I watch the jurors file out, off to enjoy the short ride to the small Holiday Inn down the road, with its tiny gym and a bar they aren’t permitted to use. I hope the trial is short, for their sakes. Given that the whole defense rests on the idea that I am actually Megan, it’s over before it’s even begun. Chris and Jeremy just don’t realize it yet.

A faint hint of Jeremy’s aftershave reaches me as I follow him down the corridor, the tap of his slightly heeled shoes echoing off the bare concrete walls. I catch up to him before he presses the button for the lift to take us to the underground car park and, as expected, he is gentlemanly in his insistence I get in first, an extended arm and a slightly sleazy smile. I refuse, staring at him until he gets inside. I turn my back to him; the prosecution’s key witness shouldn’t be seen to be talking to the lawyer for the defense.

I have thought about this moment for months. It was always going to come down to Chris’s word against mine. And the trump card he still hopes to play. That Gazette article appealed for information about an accident that took place over sixteen years ago, one that left its mark on the girl they cut from the wreckage. I trust Jeremy is watching as I lift my hair away from my neck, the action of a woman who has spent too much time inside a hot stuffy room and who just wants to feel the cool air on her skin. The lights are bright and the scar almost buried in my hairline glows silver. I don’t turn round as I stage-whisper, “I think this is what you’ve been looking for.” In my right hand is an envelope. I wave it slightly, until I feel Jeremy slip it from my grasp.

I listen to the rustle of paper as Jeremy removes the sheet from the envelope. The yellow part of a triplicate form, a hospital release note dated 10 September 2004. The night I went to get my sister a packet of cigarettes from the petrol station down the road. She had a car, but I did not. I didn’t even have a license. “Just take mine,” Leah had told me. “You can always say you’re me if you get caught.” I had agreed. Like I always did.

The door slides open into the dim shadows of the car park and I walk away, raising one hand to wave at Tom, who is already sitting in the BMW coupé, waiting to take me home. My pace is slow. Jeremy is only a few steps behind me.

He waits until he is sitting inside his own car and the closed door muffles the sound. But not enough that I can’t make out the frustrated scream as he reads the name on the hospital form.