‘Well,’ I say, unsure how to end it, but something about Jason’s body language stops my sentence right there.

‘Do you think I don’t know?’ he says, dragging on the cigarette, his face at an angle, but not breaking eye contact with me, not for a second.

‘Know what?’ I say, though I feel my cheeks heat up in the bone-cold winter air.

‘Let’s not pretend,’ Jason says. He taps ash off the end, which disperses on the breeze like a dandelion clock. I step out of the way, feeling panicked, feeling exposed.

‘Is it safe with you?’

‘Your secret? Always,’ Jason says. He reaches out to hold my shoulder. ‘I would have done the same thing as you,’ he says, before leaving. He rounds the angular corner of the Crown Court, his body disappearing, leaving a trail of smoke which hangs suspended in the air for a few seconds, then disappears too.

73.

Then

Cathy

‘I guess I’m here to report a crime,’ Cathy says carefully in the quiet room with this man, Jason, whom she barely knows.

‘Okay.’

She thinks of Joe’s eyes in the dark of the outhouse, his hands and face covered in Evan’s blood. She thinks of Frannie arriving, also responding to Joe’s call, and of her tears as he too became a murderer, both just normal people two months before, the transformation complete. She thinks of the pact they made.

‘They’ve found the body,’ Joe said, a bloodied hand on Cathy’s arm, those alien eyes on hers. ‘You need to say it was all me.’

‘What?’ she’d said, looking at the house containing Tom, not wanting to lose him, not wanting him to leave, even though she knew he wouldn’t.

‘Say it was me,’ he said again. He glanced at Frannie, who seemed to know exactly what he was saying. ‘I’ve fucked it,’ he added. ‘I’ve fucked it with Evan. There’s no way out, so you should say it was me.’

‘It was you,’ Cathy said softly.

‘Tell them everything.’ He stood behind Frannie, his hands on her angular shoulders. ‘Say it was me who killed Evan, and say it was me who killed Will. I did it all. Everything we did, I did. Say I confessed it all to you, right here. I’ll back up your story. Confess to perverting the course of justice when you covered for me. That’ll explain your DNA on the body. But tell them the rest was me. Eventually – and it might be as late as the day of the trial – they’ll offer you a plea in return for evidence against me. Hold out for it. Hold your nerve. Then take it. And then try to make your evidence reduce my crimes from murder to manslaughter.’

‘No,’ Frannie said, her voice hoarse from crying, her eyes wet. Cathy stares at Joe. He’s nothing if not smart.

‘We can’t all lose everything,’ Joe said. ‘It doesn’t make sense for us to. Let me go down for it.’