I stumbled to the window, pulled the curtains. As I did, I saw something – a car nosing its way through the crowd, down my lane. I recognised the car – it was DS Hegarty’s, and there he was behind the wheel. I stepped back from the window, quivering all over. Run. Out the back. Just go. But no. This was a small place, they would find me soon. It seemed almost inevitable he’d come – of course they’d question me again, now they knew this wasn’t the first murder I’d been involved in. And Anna had even been killed in the same way as Abby Safran. Soon, everyone would know I’d been picked up by the police again, if they didn’t already. But there was nothing to be done about it. I waited by the door for him to come, unable to escape my fate.

Casey

Casey

OCTOBER 2000

After David took me out to his production company, things were different between us. He started coming down for breakfast earlier and helping me with Madison’s sheets, then once we’d cleaned up we made coffee and chopped fruit together in companionable silence. Now the kids were sleeping longer we had hours, sometimes, before Abby padded downstairs like a wraith. After a few days she wasn’t even surprised to see us there together.

‘Breakfast?’ I would offer, like the good dogsbody I was.

‘Oh. No.’ And she’d fill her workout flask with some stinking juice and be on her way to the gym. After being rejected for the role of Nancy she’d lost even more weight. In fact, I hadn’t seen her eat solid food in weeks. She would be at the gym all morning, so often it was just David and me in the house. He was going to the office later and later, or sometimes not at all, and he helped me get the kids ready. Sometimes we dropped Madison off at school together, Carson asleep in the car seat, then we’d stop to get coffee. The first few times I took the baby in with me, but since he never stirred I started leaving him in the car, conked out. We could see the car from the window and I told myself it was fine. Certainly David never seemed bothered.

We talked about everything. Our childhoods, how he’d shaken off his Christian right-wing family in Texas, how I’d struggled to find any boundaries at all with Jenna, her failed career, her painful hopes pinned on me. His work, how he’d grown to love films as a small boy in a dusty neighbourhood cinema, the projects he dreamed of making, how frustrated he was directing Hallmark stuff when he deserved to win an Oscar. I stirred my enormous Frappuccino until the cream melted and the ice turned to slush.