He seemed disorientated by the change of direction – but then, slowly, he understood and his expression began to fill with remorse again, contrition. The starkness of his face, the almost complete lack of opacity, sent the panic charging through Jo’s bloodstream again. He was going to tell her exactly what she’d predicted: Martina had freaked out at the top of the trail; he didn’t abandon her, he helped her down. Maybe there was no ankle injury at all. Maybe he was there the entire time and the account the caller had given Jo was an account that Martina, confused and scared, had imagined, or embellished, or misremembered. Jo was here based on the word of a woman she didn’t know, had never met and, ultimately, couldn’t trust.

What the hell am I doing?

‘Yeah, I guess that night was the beginning of the end,’ Vale said, his big frame shuffling to the edge of the couch. ‘She just went totally nuts up there – accused me of leaving her alone when I was standing right beside her the whole time. I was literally looking at her, had my hands on her shoulders trying to calm her down, and she was screaming at me, calling my name like I wasn’t even there. It was weird, but mostly it was just really upsetting. In the days after that, when she’d calmed down, we tried to talk about it, but she started bringing up stuff that never even happened. She said I was watching her from inside the treeline, which was ridiculous, because why would I go hide inside the forest when she had the only torch and that place is full of bears?’ He paused, picking up his lemonade. ‘I don’t know,’ he said softly. ‘It was just sad, that’s all. I loved Martina. She was my first proper girlfriend. She was funny, sweet.’ He drank from the glass. ‘I managed to talk her around in the days after that, assure her that what she thought had happened hadn’t happened at all, but I guess it was beyond rescue by then.’ He looked up at Jo, a pained smile on his face. ‘At least, it was for me. I just … I didn’t know how to handle her.’

‘So, once you split up, you never saw her again?’

‘I saw her a bunch of times at the Kmart in Temple City. She got a job there after she dropped out of school, and I was working part-time in a supplies yard in Industry, which was three miles away. Sometimes I’d drop in. But she’d changed a lot by then.’

‘Changed how?’