‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Sorry—didn’t mean to wake you.’

I sag with relief, and sit next to her. ‘No problem. What’s up?’

‘Nothing. I wanted to see if my neighbour got my text about feeding my dog. I asked my roommate to do it, but she messaged late last night, saying she had to suddenly go to Memphis. A work thing.’

‘Okay.’

‘Phoebe says she’ll be gone for a couple days. Want to stay over tomorrow night? My bed’s bigger than yours.’

‘Sure.’ I wrap my arms around her. It already feels like a natural thing to do. She hugs me back. Our breaths shroud our heads in fog. I wonder if I should tell her how scary it was to wake up without her. Probably not. She might think that was alarming.

‘You remember Ophelia Tynan?’ she asks. ‘From the group home?’

‘Curly hair,’ I say. ‘Sucked her thumb until she was six.’ ‘Right. She had the bunk under mine, and she snored.

Drove me crazy. I got so mad at her during the day, and she never knew why. I haven’t thought about that girl in years. But you snore too.’

‘I do?’

‘Like an old dog. But it’s cute, not annoying.’

‘That’s me,’ I say. ‘Cute.’

Thistle laughs. ‘Well, give it time.’ She stands up. ‘Let’s go back to bed.’

Then she stiffens.

‘What?’ I ask.

She releases me. ‘What’s that?’ she asks, staring into the dead weeds of my backyard.

‘What’s what?’ I ask, suddenly on guard. Could someone be watching us? My house is well secured, but my yard isn’t.

‘There.’ She walks off the cold concrete and across to the dirt to a rough patch. It has fewer dead weeds than anywhere else, as though the earth has recently been turned. But I haven’t done any gardening, ever.

I follow her. The bad smell gets worse as we approach. It was never coming from inside the house. No wonder leaving the back door open made it worse.

Thistle bends down.

I see it at the same moment as she does.

Fingertips, sticking out of the dirt.

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 40

You can break me without moving or even making a sound. What am I?

Later, I realised that I could have saved the situation. If I had crouched down alongside Thistle and helped her unearth the corpse, as though we were both discovering it, then that might have been okay. A normal person would have done that. But I just watched as she peeled back the tarpaulin, which had been hidden under a thin layer of dirt. As though I had already known the body was there.

‘What the fuck?!’ Thistle says.

‘It’s Daniel Ruthven,’ I say.