The second piece was certainly about Mattie, at least to some extent, because she was named. If the piece had finally achieved publication, Vera assumed that Jenny would have chosen a pseudonym for her, but at this early point of the process she clearly hadn’t seen the need. There was one complete sentence, then a number of gaps. It seemed that sparks had burned isolated little holes in the paper, without setting the whole sheet alight. That at least was how it looked from the scanned image that the lab had attached, along with the words within the body of the email on the screen.

The complete sentence still read like an official report or undergraduate textbook: It is sometimes a mistake to blame an outsider for disrupting the balance of a family, when other factors could be in force. Did this mean that Jenny was making an excuse for Michael Morgan? Was she implying that Mattie was solely responsible for the death of her son? The rest of the words were scattered apparently at random as short phrases, separated by the burn marks.

Death by drowning is never t stice system substitute mother can someti

happiness s then the trigger n alternative way of Sometimes it’s best not to intervene. illness tie Jone

Vera stared at the screen. She felt suddenly cold and realized that the timer had switched off the heating. It was already late. She fetched her outdoor coat and sat in that, would have fancied a whisky, but couldn’t be arsed to get up again and fetch it. Still there was the background sound of rain, like shingle hurled against glass. The snatches of text tantalized her. Death by drowning surely meant Elias. But Veronica’s son was drowned too. What was the word that Jenny had written after ‘never’ in the first phrase? Vera printed off the scanned image of the charred and blasted paper, held a ruler across it so that she could see which words were written on the same line, but still it made no sense.

In frustration she turned to the third sheet of paper. This was the most damaged. In the email, the technician had said she thought it might have been torn in half before it was burned: there was one ragged edge. It seemed clear to Vera, even from the brief fragments that the tone was different, less formal. This wasn’t a note from an official report, but more like a personal diary entry.

What the hell

ing friendship