I don’t know why I told her the truth. Perhaps because I still didn’t understand it myself, that this had happened and I was now involved.

‘I – I saw something, but I didn’t really – I never touched it or anything. I just ran, I panicked.’

Marilyn drew back, biting her lip in distress. I tried not to watch crime drama on TV as it was often so wrong in the details, but a few times Marilyn had invited me over for the evening and she was a big fan. She’d probably have been quite excited to find a body.

‘But Rachel! Why didn’t you call the police? Or at least tell someone?’

That was the question I couldn’t answer, not without revealing too much. ‘I don’t know. Just didn’t.’

She was looking at me closely. ‘You didn’t see who it was?’ She lowered her voice and I realised I had been talking too loudly, that Audrey might have heard me admit my lie. I drew Marilyn inside and shut the door, with a strange reluctance. Even though this was my own home, and I wasn’t restrained or locked in, the old panic was rising in me, flooding my blood. Get out of here. Run.

‘No – I don’t know if it was a man or a woman, even.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why? Do you know?’ A cold feeling was sweeping through me. ‘Who was it?’ I pictured a heap of clothes among leaves – jeans, feet in scuffed trainers. A small pale hand, the ring, the nails painted green – a woman then, though I hadn’t registered it at the time, or else I had blocked it out. How could Marilyn know who it was, already?

‘Rachel,’ said Marilyn hesitantly. ‘They’re saying it’s Anna. Anna’s been murdered. They’ve already told Alex. He – he rang me.’ Her voice broke, stoical Marilyn, who never cried when we had to put a dog down, who rarely showed emotion at all.

Anna. And I had found her, and run away. I knew then that I was in even worse trouble than I’d thought.

Casey

Casey

AUGUST 2000

David. Abby. Carson. Madison. The Safran family. I was reciting it in my head as the plane swooped into LAX. I’d never been on one before, and had overdone it on the free bar. Now I was dry-mouthed and nauseous. Nervous too. My first time leaving the UK and it was to come all this way by myself, to work as a nanny for a Hollywood producer and his wife, an actress. Madison was five. The baby was a few months or so. I didn’t like kids much, but Jenna said it was a shrewd move, getting this six-month contract. It was her who’d pushed me to study child development at sixth-form college, alongside drama. She’d even brought home the application form for the American nanny agency, Little Helpers.