‘I’m here to help you, you know. They sometimes call this job a mother’s help, but . . . I’m a father’s help too.’ My hand rested on the table near his. I wasn’t brave enough to touch him, not yet. But the invite was there. What was I doing? I didn’t like David, not in that way. I was just lonely. And Abby was so awful to me.

‘Thank you, Casey.’ He stood up. ‘You’re more of a help than you know. Now leave all this, please, and go to bed. Carson will be up in an hour, I’m sure.’

I went to bed, obscurely disappointed, but with a small tick of excitement deep in my stomach. Something was going to happen. I knew it. At nineteen, I still thought something was better than nothing. How wrong I was about that.

Rachel

Rachel

I should have gone to see Jeremy, by rights. I was the one who needed his help, and he lived miles away, in a coastal town in Kent. But that was the way it had always been with us – I called, and he came. All the way to California the first time, and he stayed there for months while I was in prison, finding a lawyer for the appeal and raising the money and eventually getting me out. I owed Jeremy a lot. But owing is no basis for love, as we found out in the eighteen long months we tried to live together as husband and wife, in his one-bed flat overlooking the English Channel. Until I realised I had traded one kind of prison for another.

The police were on the green again as I left the house the next morning, and I saw DS Hegarty talking to some of the white-suit people. ‘Ms Caldwell. Going somewhere?’

‘Um, no. Meeting a friend at the station.’

He looked me over. ‘That’s good. Someone to be with you at such a difficult time.’ The meaning was clear – they were watching me, and another arrest was extremely likely. They just didn’t have enough evidence yet. I thought again of telling him about the letters on my fridge – but that would mean admitting who I was. And what could make me look more guilty?

I took the bus into Oxenholme and met Jeremy off the train, my heart softening and sinking as I saw him bumble towards me, arms full of plastic bags and manila folders, in the same old parka as fifteen years before. My ex-husband. The only man who knew the truth of me, or at least, the only one alive. Even he didn’t know it all.

‘Hey you.’