There was even a photograph of me from several weeks before the murder, holding Carson, with Madison by my side. She was wearing Minnie Mouse ears. It was the day we went to Disneyland. But how did the press get hold of it? I’d never seen it before. Someone had stolen it from the house, maybe. I remembered it had been on a roll of film that Abby sent me to get developed, largely because she liked some of the pictures of herself near the start. David had taken the photo, I remembered, on Main Street while waiting for the parade – there were dozens of other people in the shot, strangers, who would perhaps have seen this photo in the paper or on TV and said, Look, it’s me! – a brief taste of fame, standing close to a murderer.

As I looked at the photograph for the first time in nearly twenty years, I remembered how it felt that day. The punishing heat of midday. Carson red and cranky, Madison exhausted from putting on a show for her parents, twirling all day in her princess dress, pure polyester, now overheated and whiney. Disneyland is supposed to be fun for families, but I’d never understood why. Soaring heat, queues for everything, hungry, tired kids missing their naps, dads more used to being at the office put on childcare duty – it’s a recipe for disaster. But all you see when you look at that picture is smiles. Either a kind nanny who loved the children and would never have hurt them. Or a cold-blooded murderer, who’d smile now but kill them all later, maybe still smiling as she pressed the pillow down. A man may smile and smile and be a villain. The line surfaced, I didn’t know where from. Shakespeare, maybe? One of the few books in the dusty prison library.