Will catches my fidgeting fingers, gently straightens them against the sheets. ‘And proving Robert Reid was murdered is the only way you can know.’

My laugh is brittle. ‘I mean, I know how ridiculous it sounds, I do. And I know that proving it isn’t definitive proof that I was once him or that Mum wasn’t lying.’ Even as that little desperate voice inside me insists, But you’re living in his house, his house. I look down at our hands. ‘But it would be something. I’m not afraid of being bipolar. But I am afraid of what happened after Mum died – of that person who became psychotic because she stopped taking her meds for the first time in ten years. I can’t lose control like that again. I can’t let myself feel like that again.’ My voice is so hoarse now, I can hardly speak. ‘I can’t hate myself – or her – like that again. I don’t think I’d survive it.’

Because what I felt – what I can still feel – in that awful room is bad enough. Mum’s laboured breathing warm against my skin as I help her lie back against the pillows. Her fingers no longer steady, her smile no longer serene – no longer a smile – as the minutes tick past in that hot oppressive dark. I feel her fear, sharp and brittle and growing. I see the shine of it in her eyes. I say her name, I whisper it. And when she says mine, I hear the regret in it, maybe even the horror.

‘Mum, should I get someone?’

My heart shuddering inside my chest when she answers only with that rattle; that dry choking thing that sometimes I hear in my dreams. ‘Should I get someone?’

And because I did – and far too late – she died in the dark, in that room. Afraid and completely alone.

‘Maggie.’

I close my eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It doesn’t matter if your mum was lying or not,’ Will says. ‘Hey, Maggie. Look at me.’

When I do, his expression is anything but blank. He squeezes my fingers hard. ‘You did the right thing.’

‘Will—’

‘I’d do it too.’ His pupils are so wide his eyes are almost black. ‘If Mum asked me to. Next week, next year. Tomorrow. I’d do it.’

My nose and eyes burn with the tears I refuse to cry.

‘Is that it?’ Will says. ‘Everything you think makes you a terrible person? Everything you hope will put me off you?’

‘You’d be crazy not to be.’

His smile is rueful. ‘You’ve got to stop using that word.’

Crazy is a word for lazy, stupid people, Maggie. Eyes always bright, smile always wide as if she knew something everyone else only wanted to. Don’t forget that. Crazy is for lazy.

Will pushes aside the sheets and moves close enough to me that my skin warms and comes instantly alive, my breath quicker in my chest.

‘I like you, Maggie. From the moment I saw you I more than liked you. And you don’t have the monopoly on doubting yourself, you know. On not knowing what’s good for you.’ He gives me that smile, slow and generous. ‘But I will be good for you, Maggie MacKay. In whatever way you want me to be. I think this kind of more than like you means I don’t have much choice.’