-I guess late teens? Poor kid. His whole family gone. But no, the dad couldn’t have done it – he was shot from a distance, remember? Definitely didn’t do it himself. The gun had his prints on of course, but it was his gun! It also had the nanny’s prints.

-She explained that. She picked it up off the floor.

-Sounds well dodgy.

-Yeah, but it’s America! They’re all gun nuts. I think she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and naïve.

-What about how she acted after? She never cried, she talked to the news reporters, she even smiled for the camera? After the whole family were killed?

-She was a kid, she wanted to be an actress, plus her mum was pushing her into the limelight . . .

-Her mum! OMG we have to talk about this. The true villain of the piece!

-Jenna. The worst.

-Totally.

Rachel

Rachel

Coldwater was a small Lake District town with a satellite police station, mostly kept open to process tourist complaints about lost wallets, parking disputes, and the occasional boat-related theft. I’d been to the station once before, when a dog got loose in town and I came to collect it for the shelter. I still remembered going in, a brief moment of fear, crossing the threshold, that I might never be let out again. Bending to soothe the dog, a terrified collie let out of a van on the A road, found dodging cars. I’d taken him to the shelter and he was now happily rehomed on a farm over Ambleside way. The station is quaint, a small building of old stone just off the high street, which is crowded with souvenir shops and tea rooms, huddled up beside the dark waters of our lake. I was taken into a cold room with a table and two chairs, bare floor and walls. They brought me water. Did I have a lawyer? they asked. No. Of course I didn’t. ‘Well, this is just a chat, Rachel. For now.’ They put a tape on, an actual old cassette tape in a machine, and with the click of it into the deck I began to panic and sweat, despite the chill air, a Pavlovian response. It was happening again, somehow. And it was as if I’d always expected it. I wasn’t even surprised.