‘I know, but . . .’ She wouldn’t meet my eyes. A horrible feeling slid down into my stomach.

‘I didn’t kill Anna, Marilyn. You do believe me?’

‘Oh, Rachel, of course I do, but . . .’

‘But?’

Marilyn let out a deep sigh. She tapped into her keyboard, then spun her monitor around, so I could see what was on it.

‘That’s you, isn’t it? You’re Casey Adams.’

Casey

Casey

OCTOBER 2000

Abby didn’t get the role of Nancy the nurse. I knew it as soon as she drove up that day, the angry way the tyres crunched on the drive, and I felt myself tense. I was out the back with the kids, Carson asleep in his pram under a parasol, Madison splashing in the pool under my watchful eye.

Being Madison, she wore a pink swimsuit with frills and sequins, but she seemed happy for once, playing and singing to herself, sometimes shouting, ‘Look, Casey!’

‘I’m looking,’ I’d call back, one eye on my paperback, the first book I’d been able to read all summer. It was a Marian Keyes, cheerful and funny, and it reminded me of home. No one in America got my jokes, and I found myself missing the guys at college, Suzi and Becks, Ryan, and even Jeremy, always panting and sweating. Casey! I found this article on the internet! In 2000 I barely went on the internet. I’d checked my email at David’s office the day before, but there was nothing from any of them in my brand-new Hotmail folder. The visit had been a little strange. Nothing had happened, as such, he’d just shown me round the small, cramped offices near the beach, with hardly anyone else there, except for one receptionist with blue hair who seemed surprised to see us. The lack of glamour, the abandoned props and dusty posters of low-budget nineties films were a bit disappointing, but I felt hopeful all the same. Next time a part came up for someone my age, maybe he’d let me audition. Or even just cast me. That happened, didn’t it, unknowns propelled to stardom?

It was October now, every house already decorated with pumpkins and spider webs, the shops full of trick-or-treat sweets, and I was almost looking forward to Halloween in LA, planning how to dress the kids up. I had let my guard down, and would soon pay for it.

The sound of Abby’s car. Madison heard it too, and her head whipped around, her face guilty, as if she was doing something wrong by playing in the pool. I heard the door slam and Abby’s flip-flops slapping across the tiles. She threw open the patio doors, which they called something else.

‘You left the front door open, Casey!’

‘What?’ Surely I wouldn’t do that?

‘It was, like, ajar. You can’t do that! We could get robbed!’