He’d looked at me before going on. ‘So you understand that there is a much higher chance that he will go to prison for a very long time. He’ll be away from you, away from your younger sister. Who will be there to take care of you? You have to be honest about what happened, so that we can get your dad back home and start rebuilding your family.’

‘Your honour, the defence is leading the witness,’ stated the prosecution again.

‘Do you have a question?’ the judge had asked.

The lawyer had looked at me through narrowed eyes. ‘So I’d like to ask you again,’ he said, pausing for effect. ‘Who stabbed your father?’

I’d leant into the microphone, aware that the deadly silent courtroom was holding its breath. ‘I did,’ I said, as clearly and succinctly as I could. ‘I stabbed him.’

14

I feel sick, as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach. I can’t shake off the feeling that everybody is out to get me and I’m a flailing ship without a port in the storm. I need to steady myself, so that I don’t sink beneath the rising waters that are perilously close to taking me under.

I knew that my father’s trial was a big deal in New York at the time, but I could never have imagined that it would follow me to England almost thirty years later; that there were people in the world who were affected by it back then and were still able to recall a life I’ve tried so hard to forget.

Unable to help myself, I ease up the lid of my laptop and sit with fingertips poised over the keyboard. I’ve never thought to do this, but it suddenly occurs to me that even those who weren’t aware of the case at the time only have to put a few keywords into Google to find out all about it.

I type in ‘Man kills wife 1995 New York’ and hover over Enter, asking myself if I really want to do this. I swallow hard, hit the button and close my eyes, not knowing what is waiting for me when I open them.

Eventually working up the courage, I squint and am immediately sucker-punched by an image of two little girls: me, holding an ice cream, smiling self-consciously into the camera lens, and my sister, with her trusty pink bunny rabbit beside her and half her ice cream smeared around her face.