Very slowly, trying not to get between them, I inched across the kitchen towards Carson. He knew something was up from the raised voices, his eyes moving between his parents. I lifted him out, feeling his warm, solid body, and laid his head against me. His little heart was racing. I would keep him safe.

‘I’m going to take him for a walk,’ I said quietly.

Both their heads swung round, but they barely noticed me. I should have gone up and woken Madison, taken her too. But I thought, stupidly, that this morning might be the last chance she got to sleep thinking she had two happy parents. Before her life changed for ever. That decision led to her death.

I slipped my feet into my old dirty flip-flops, put on Carson’s sun hat and opened the door, rushing to get away. I might have left the front door open, I don’t know. Or maybe someone got that far, almost escaped, but didn’t make it. Maybe Madison woke up and opened it, then later was taken to her bed by force, smothered there, fully aware of what was happening to her. I’ll never know for sure.

I stepped out into the sunlit street, almost staggering under the heat of the day, Carson heavy against my hip – too late to go back for his buggy, or stroller, as I should have learned to say – and walked down the street with him. It was 10.43 a.m.

Rachel

Rachel

OK, think, think Casey. Same thing I had told myself that day in the Safrans’ house. If you don’t think fast, you’re going to die.

Alex was on his feet now, pacing around the shelter’s office, sometimes stopping to pick up random things and put them down, the dog lead I had eyed earlier, Marilyn’s stapler with her name on it in Tippex, a dog-shaped donation box.

‘I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me right away,’ he said. ‘I said to Anna, you’re crazy, there’s no way that’s her, she’d have told me if she’d been to prison. But then I saw it was true after all. I could have told you my story too, then, if you’d just been honest. I thought we had a thing, you know?’

I pressed down on my hands to stop them trembling.

‘We did,’ I said. ‘We do. I just – how could I tell you that? I thought you’d run a mile.’

‘You think I don’t understand about being judged? Wild Alex Devine, the kid who got into all that trouble? Come on.’