“Just an odd tone to her voice,” Val said. “I thought it would be prudent to have someone else present, just in case. How are my birds?”

“They’re good,” I said. “I’m looking forward to having time to keep working on their house.”

“Once you get the ghost out of yours,” she said.

“Mmm.”

“Are they going to be safe in Mr. Bingley’s company while you’re away?”

“He doesn’t seem to mind them,” I said. I tried to explain what it was like living with a man who one minute was prepared to put his hand in mine, and the next minute threatened to kill me. Val stood with a palm on the steel autopsy table, hip cocked, watching my face with concern.

“When are you going back down to Sydney?” she asked.

“I thought I’d take off this afternoon,” I said. “I don’t want to be anywhere I’m known to frequent when the show goes to air.”

I’d told Val about my guilt at not being able to stay and continue the case with Amanda and Sweeney, that I had to head back down to Sydney to make an official statement on Melanie Springfield’s accusation. At precisely seven that night, Stories and Lives was going to air my interview, complete with the snippet about a “predatory relationship” with her eight-year-old sister and my response. I’d glanced at my watch a hundred times that day already, counting down the hours until the next chapter of my nightmare began.

In time Val wheeled out Andrew Bell’s body from a room behind two huge swinging doors. A couple of friends and family members who couldn’t make the funeral had decided to come and view the body, so Val had asked the funeral director to come in early and dress Andrew. He was dressed in a neat black suit with fine pinstripes, expensive. The tie was an oddly joyful floral print, pink and red. The director had done what she could with his head, but the back of Andrew’s skull had been obliterated during the shooting and she had been forced to shave the rest of it to document the injuries. In stark contrast to his suit, Andrew was wearing a Brisbane Broncos football team beanie, the rearing horse emblem pulled low on his smooth forehead. As per custom, Val took a white sheet from the shelves beside a rack of tools and spread it over the body only seconds before a buzzer announced Stephanie’s entry.

The receptionist brought her in. Stephanie walked weakly, her steps shorter than usual, the hesitant tread of someone struggling under the physical weight of grief. She burst into tears at the sight of the figure on the gurney, hardly seeming to question my presence in the room at all.