I’ve made sure that other people have been cleaning the medical centre lately so that mine won’t be the last key card to show up. Crew members are in and out of there all the time so I’m confident there will be enough traces that there’ll be no reason for suspicion to come my way. And as Lola suggested, I told a couple of people that Stuart had mentioned he was planning to go swimming. I’d be surprised if the rumour can be traced back to me, it’s common knowledge around the ship now. I guess that’s one advantage of being somewhere with almost no privacy.

Even though I destroyed the paper copy of my DNA results, I imagine there must also be electronic copies, so it’s only a matter of time. Hopefully, if I stick to my story about wearing Lola’s jumpers, it should be OK. It holds up. I think. Or does it? I’m so confused.

I feel like time is running out for me and Lola. That the net is closing in, and we need to get off this ship as soon as possible. I’m planning to use this latest incident as my excuse to tell Leo that I’m not coping after losing Lola and I need time away after all. I will tell him I’m going to take a holiday until I feel more able to face the world. Which is kind of the truth.

After having to dispose of Stuart, I left it a couple of days before going to see Lola again – I knew she had enough food and didn’t feel quite ready to see her or speak to her yet. Plus I didn’t trust myself not to let something slip about Alice bumping into me. It’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt like that about her and I’m not sure what to think about it.

In the days after I did what I did, I felt like I was going mad. I veered between telling Lola I couldn’t cope and was going to give myself up, and despair at the thought that I might go to prison and she’d be alone in the outside world, or that she’d go to prison and I’d have failed her yet again. I briefly considered slipping under the water in the bath and not coming up, just so that I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. To no longer be tormented by the nightmares I’m now having where Stuart looks at me with his glassy, sightless eyes, and instead of his voice, there’s only the horrific sound of bones crunching in that machine.

But I got over it. Lola needs me. And I owe her. I can’t let her down again.