‘We’ll let you know if he turns up, of course. There’s no sign he’s left the country, but of course he could have got a fake passport, or gone to Ireland on the ferry.’

He wouldn’t turn up. Carson had covered our tracks so carefully, and it was unlikely the police would think to look around the shelter or dredge the lake. They would find Alex’s car soon surely, and his phone, and hopefully conclude he had fled the country. Perhaps this time it would have been better to tell the truth about what I’d done, but I’d been too burned by the system before. Another lie to add to the one I’d been sitting on for years. And I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, be associated with another murder.

It was Carson, of course, who had brought the Disneyland photo over from America, hoping to make contact with me, explain who he was when the moment was right. He’d taken it in to work, left it in the drawer of his desk, where Tom had found it, snooping, and put two and two together. It was Tom and Katrin who had sold my story to the press, along with photos they’d taken of me on their phones. Katrin had tearfully confided this to me the day before, when I went into the shelter to clear out my desk, her mascara smeared prettily under her huge eyes.

‘I’m, like, so sorry, Rachel – we just needed the money, you know for college, and Tom talked me into it. I didn’t even want to.’

So that explained the photo. Carson said he hadn’t spelt out Casey with my fridge letters, though, so that must have been Alex, trying to scare me into telling the police who I really was, which would make them suspect me more. Letting himself in with the key I’d so carelessly left out. I would never be stupid like that again, never allow myself to relax. Jeremy had also been in touch many times, begging for my forgiveness, but I thought I might let him go. I’d realised it was cruel, to keep him so close, giving him hope when really there was none. This time I had to start over without any crutches.