Of course, I hadn’t seen Alex last night because it was his time with his son, at his flat in town. So Anna had been alone at her house all night. Or had she been with someone? Her house – Alex’s house, really – was on the other side of the woods, at least two miles from my side. Had she walked into the forest alone, or had someone dragged her there? It was a long way to carry something as heavy as a body. There’s a reason we have the phrase a dead weight. Had she been killed very early today, or late last night? Her trainers were muddy – did that mean she’d gone there of her own volition, for a morning walk, then been surprised by some stranger with a knife? You hear of things like that happening.

‘I had him, took him to school before we – before I heard. He was fine this morning – wanted to bring his Thomas train with him to school. I guess he never will be again.’ Alex’s voice was flat with pain.

I pressed my hands hard on the worktop. Right now, Sam was carrying on as normal, at school, learning fractions or building Lego or whatever it was they did there. He had no idea his mother was dead. That he would never see her again, that his young life was changed so horribly for ever. Like me back then, walking down that hot street, no idea that any second I would open a door and enter a nightmare I had never really left. I’d thought I had, but now it had returned. The worst part was, it felt inevitable. Of course it hadn’t ended, not really. After all, I had never been punished for what I did, not properly, and now perhaps it was time.

The Death of a Child Star

from People magazine, March 2001

Madison Safran may have been only five years old when she died, but she already had an agent, a manager, and substantial earnings from film and TV. From playing a toddler on CHANGE OF LIFE to the follow-on milk baby in the popular commercials, Madison’s cherubic smile and curls had made her one of Hollywood’s top earners under eighteen, with several pageant wins to her name as well. Her mother, Abigail, had been a TV starlet, appearing in several shows and some 90s teen horrors before marrying the producer of one, David Safran, and retiring at the age of thirty to start a family. Four years later she was pregnant again with Carson, her second child.