When I’ve made the tea, I sit on the sofa opposite her and wait for her to carry on.

Her living room is newer than I expected. It’s mostly cream with a few framed pictures on the wall. There’s a black-and-white image of five girls in a row, and I try to figure out which one is Mrs. Hawkins.

Time scares me. I know it happens, but it doesn’t feel real, not until you see someone’s history and you realize they come from a different world. Ten years feel like a lifetime to me, but, to my neighbor, it’s barely a blink.

“Who came after the Morgans?” I ask, and she reels off a list of the next five owners.

When she gets to Amy’s family, I look for any suggestion that they hid something only a neighbor would see.

But Mrs. Hawkins just smiles. “They kept themselves to themselves.”

That’s what they say on the news sometimes, when a killer is caught or a horrible truth is revealed. It’s another way of saying they were hiding but no one was nosy enough to notice.

“There were two children,” she says, “but I barely saw them. A lovely big garden, yet they only played outside for the first year. Such a shame. Maybe you’ll use it more. I see a little boy sometimes. Is that your…brother?”

She means Aaron, and I say, “Sort of. My mum married his dad, but he only stays with us sometimes.”

She nods like she understands. “Modern families. It’s different these days.”

“Was there anything…odd about the Pearces?”

I can’t leave without asking. I’m clinging to the hope that Mrs. Hawkins saw something that wasn’t quite right.

“What do you mean, love?” she asks.

You’d know if you saw it. That’s what I think. But out loud I say, “It doesn’t matter.”

They still live too close for me to dig very deep. She could bump into them in the village, and what then? Would she tell them a boy had been asking questions?

Instead, I stand to leave and say, “Thank you for the tea.”

It’s only when my hand is on the door handle that she adds, “They were very noisy when they first moved in. Nothing to complain about. I liked hearing it. But, after a while, it was as if no one lived there at all.”

46

I scroll through the photos on my phone, stopping on the ones of Amy’s journal.

He can’t possibly know the truth…