He stared at me. I wondered if he remembered who I was, or knew I’d fought with his mother that day in the street. ‘Hi,’ he said warily.

‘Are you driving your cars?’

He nodded. Stupid question.

‘I’m a friend of your daddy’s.’

‘I know.’

‘Sam – I’m really sorry about your mummy.’

Was that the right thing to say, or was it better not to remind him? He bowed his head, putting a car in his mouth and sucking it. Shame swept over me – was I really trying to pump a small child, a bereaved child, for information to save my own sorry skin?

‘OK, Sam. See you. Let me just climb over you.’

I was several steps down before he said, ‘Does she know I’m here?’

‘Hm?’ I turned back. He was watching me intently, head cocked to the side. He had Alex’s eyes, Anna’s fair hair.

‘Mummy. She put me to bed but then she wasn’t there.’

Careful, careful.

‘I’m sorry, Sam. When was this?’ Stupid question. He was too young to know one day from another. ‘Was it here or – at the other house?’

‘Yes, home,’ he said impatiently. ‘Mummy was cross with Daddy. Now I don’t know where she is.’

Oh, God. So he was saying, what – Alex had brought him to Anna, just as Don said, and Anna had put him to bed there? And something had happened to her while Sam slept? But how then had he got back to Alex’s – and why had Alex lied about it? I wished there was some way to be sure what day we were talking about.

A door opened on to the landing then, and I jumped. It was a young woman, mid-twenties maybe, in jeans and bare feet, with long, reddish hair.

‘Sam, there you are! I was looking for you.’

This was Alex’s neighbour, Colette. He’d mentioned her a few more times than I was comfortable with. She worked for the tourist board, I thought. She spotted me, her face darkening. ‘Oh.’

‘I’m just going.’ I held up my hand. ‘Bye, Sam.’

And I left, heart hammering and mind racing, trying to work out what it all meant.

Casey

Casey

JUNE 2002

‘Adams. You have a visitor.’

I roused myself from my bunk, where I tended to lie in a kind of stupor during visiting hours. No one ever came to see me on Death Row. Jenna kept saying she couldn’t afford to fly, and my lawyers had long stopped visiting. They considered they’d done their job by advising me to plead guilty, and since I’d ignored them, I could now rot for the rest of my life, or until the state killed me. I was supposed to have an automatic appeal, but the date kept moving, and with no new evidence, it seemed clear it would just confirm the guilty verdict.