‘One way or another,’ he said, pointing at my window now, pressing a finger to it, ‘your secrets are going to come out, and they’re going to be a part of this story, but how they’re a part of it is up to you.’ I had to slow down, unsure if the gates were even wide enough for me to get the car past him. McCaskell pounced on the opportunity, coming at me again: ‘So you can give them all up to me voluntarily, you can talk about them, justify them and defend yourself, and I’ll quote you directly on everything. Or you can keep hiding from me, you can keep running and I can keep chasing, and when I find out what those secrets are – and I will, David; I always do – I’ll put in absolutely everything I have. And it’ll hurt you, I promise you that. What I write, it’ll rip your life apart.’

I accelerated away.

Empty

2002

Los Angeles | Thursday 15 August

They left the house before the sun was up. The car was quiet. Neither of them had slept well the previous night, but for different reasons: Ethan, because he was so excited about starting the next chapter of his life; Jo, because her son was leaving for college and, secretly, without ever having shown him for a single second, it was tearing her heart in two.

‘Are you going to be all right, Mom?’ he asked when they stopped to pick up coffee in Santa Clarita, both of them lit by the red-and-yellow glow from a Carl’s Jr. sign.

She smiled at him and squeezed his arm. ‘I’ll be fine, baby. I’ll get to do all the things I always dreamed of, like gardening and yoga.’ She winked at him, and he returned her smile, and when they got back to the car he’d already moved on, talking breathlessly about how the computer science portion of his degree could lead to all sorts of things, including designing video games.