Inside the bag there is a navy cotton blouse, with a bright red strip of ribbon banding the inside of the collar. I’m momentarily thrown because the blouse is mine. It was on my bed this morning, folded with the other clean laundry. Only now do I realize that the police are in my house. Of course they are. Crawling all over our home, combing for evidence, peering into every nook and cranny of our lives. I imagine my neighbours gathering outside on the street, gazing in amazement at the police cordon that has been set up, at the parade of uniformed officers going in and out of my house, carrying away computers and laptops, stowing them in their white vans to be driven away, their contents trawled through for anything incriminating, any clue at all that could point to a motive, a reason behind this terrible act. My neighbours will be shaking their heads in bewildered dismay. Willow Park used to be such a quiet, respectable road. And now the police are there again – the second time in twenty-four hours.

Wait until the press gets wind of this, I think. Although I imagine they already have. Tabloid hacks swarming to the school, questioning the other parents, the other pupils – the witnesses, the survivors. And when word leaks out as to the identities, then they’ll come for us – our neighbours, our family members, my work colleagues, our friends – they’ll descend like vultures, come to strip the carcass of our lives to the bone.

‘Lindsey here will show you to the Ladies,’ Cassins says, interrupting my thoughts.

Her amber eyes follow me as I leave the room.

Alone in the toilets, I break down. My ruined blouse in my hands, I stand there in the cubicle in my bra and skirt and bawl. The sound frightens me. I will myself to stop.

‘Pull yourself together,’ I snap, as if it’s one of the girls I’m scolding, Beth nursing bruised feelings, Eva losing it over a poor performance at the pool.

I blow my nose, then flush the tissue away and pull on the clean shirt they have given me. At the sink, I avoid contact with my own reflection, washing my hands quickly, wiping them on my skirt rather than the sour-looking towel on a rail. I’ve put my blood-stained blouse in the same carrier bag that had held my laundered shirt, but now I realize that I don’t want the thing. How could I ever wear it again? There’s a flip-top bin in the corner of the room; I open it and shove my blouse deep inside, then step away briskly, holding my breath against the smell.