YESTERDAY I SPENT the afternoon with my lawyer Rebecca, running through the events that led up to that moment. Pushing Cormac, seeing the explosion of blood and bone, the train screaming to a stop. The thud of boots as the police rushed down the ramp, slamming me onto the concrete, cold cuffs against the chafed skin of my wrists.

The video from the CCTV on the platform was shared widely on social media and people like Joe, or doing what Joe used to do, were tasked with filtering it out along with all the other content that breaches their standards. The CCTV footage limits my defence options in the trial.

My nights are mostly sleepless and when I do dream it’s about Cormac. I wake with a cool dampness on my spine and his voice in my head. The dreams are always the same: he’s there in my old office sitting across from me, asking me those questions. He was always asking questions. Then when he leaves, I follow him through the streets until we’re on the train platform. It always ends the same way. Sometimes a conversation first, sometimes he pleads with me, but the train always arrives.

Despite the dreams, the hard prison bed, the dry meat and waterlogged vegetables they serve every day, despite it all, I still don’t feel any regret. I had to do it. I had to. Cormac tried to kill me. He wouldn’t stop until he had killed us all. It was either my family or him.

Rebecca and her assistant have been reviewing the evidence submitted by the prosecution. We’ve gone through all of the journal entries the police found after the fire, piecing together that night with Peter all those years ago. The prosecution are hoping to show that I am of dubious character, that I not only killed Nathan Schultz in cold blood, but I pushed his father to suicide. They want the judge to believe I am cold and calculating. Rebecca is confident that if we can break this chain of logic, and show it wasn’t a considered action but an impulsive one, then we should see the charges downgraded.

With any luck I’ll only be in here for a few years. That’s a lot of time to reflect. I’ve read studies about what incarceration does to the human mind, the distance from loved ones, the isolation and boredom.