‘Casey,’ he said. ‘It’s all right, you’re safe now.’

‘Callum?’ I said, and then I saw it in his eyes, the colour of agate framed in dark lashes. The eyes never change. My baby. ‘Is it – Carson?’

‘Hello, Casey,’ he said.

And then it came to me. Callum’s surname, Stevenson – that was the same as Abby’s family name. The great-aunt he had gone to live with. Callum Stevenson was Carson Safran.

He prodded Alex with the tip of his Converse. The body – that’s what it was now – shifted like a rag doll. He was dead. Alex no longer existed. I had done this. Killed a man for the second time in my life. Once, to save a baby. This time, to save myself. But I had not struck the final blow.

The boy looked at me, eyes wide with shock. ‘He’s dead.’

I started to hyperventilate. ‘I’ll go to prison. Life. This is it for me. You have to run, Carson, I’ll say I did it. Maybe it’ll be self-defence, he tried to drown me after all, and . . .’

His voice shook, but he said, ‘No. I’m not leaving you. I’m here to help you.’

I stared at him. I didn’t understand what was going on. ‘But – why?’

‘I remember you a bit, you know? Deep down somewhere. You protected me that day?’

I nodded.

‘I’ve wanted to know for so long. Tell me what really happened. Please? It was my dad, right? He killed Mum and Madison?’

I sat up, with difficulty, still coughing out water. ‘How did you – how did you know?’

He bent down to me. ‘When Aunt Ruth died, she had all these boxes of evidence about the case. I don’t know how she got hold of it, a private detective I think, but it was all there. Dad’s weird behaviour beforehand, the strength it would take to . . . do that to Madison. You couldn’t have done it. His DNA in Mum’s nails and on the pillow. I saw the photos, you were only tiny.’ So were you, I thought, and look at you now. ‘I never thought you’d done it,’ he said. ‘When I think about you, somehow I just always felt . . . safe. Loved. Is that crazy?’

I was trembling. Carson didn’t think I was a murderer. He believed me.

‘How did you find me?’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘I looked online, asked people. You can find anyone if you pay enough.’

‘The poster – BB2000 – that was you?’ Of course. The year he had been born and . . . ‘Butterball? You – remembered that?’ He couldn’t have.