She wished she hadn’t told him, in my memory. She wished she hadn’t mentioned it. It was the dollars. It must have been.

‘But how did he get it?’

‘I don’t know about that. I do know that he disappeared pretty quickly after she died. Didn’t even come to the funeral – cremation.’

‘And you didn’t mention it to anyone? Her parents I mean. About the money? About Ariel disappearing?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Sebastian wouldn’t hear any of it until after the service. And when I brought it up afterwards, he insisted that it was your money and that you’d left it with him, in his charge. Only you could take it. Wouldn’t even consider giving it up to anyone else. You know how bloody uptight he is about all that crap.’

‘So, what, Ariel could have broken in and taken it?’

She considers this for a second. ‘Who knows? We had a kind of wake for her. I looked out for him but didn’t see him. We were half-expecting you to turn up,’ she says then, and her face changes.

I hear the words and then the tears come. I am in mourning. For Grace. For our past. The loss of it all.

41

Friday

The need for new air in my lungs overrides my decision to make my way straight to Seb’s. Some part of me is still feeling the effects of the last day or so layering themselves over the events of the last ten days. I’m struggling with the information. I haven’t processed it yet.

The sun has set into the edges of the street and paints the houses in flame. But the beauty can’t penetrate my anxiety.

I have to find Ariel. I didn’t even go to her funeral. If I could remember where I might have been, that would be something. Perhaps there’d be something symbolic in what I had done that day if I could only put myself there. Did I think about her – specifically – that day? Or dream of her maybe that night? I wasn’t there, but he was at the house. With the money.

And now the money’s vanished. How am I going to get off this murder case? I described every detail of the house to the police, confessed to them I was there. It was as if I’d framed myself.