“Yes.” Mum’s voice is shaky but formal. Her focus never drifts toward Becca or Auntie Rach, and I’m not sure whether she’s spotted me. “We’d only been together for eight, maybe nine months, but we cared deeply about each other.”

“What would you say Mr. Wood’s state of mind was like in the weeks preceding his death?”

“It was a difficult time. I’d been diagnosed with a form of cancer and he was the only one who knew.”

“Did you ever suspect he was suicidal?”

Mum considers. “No. I honestly don’t think he was. Distressed, yes. Worried about me. But . . . he wouldn’t have left me to deal with everything on my own. We were both trying to stay positive.”

The prosecutor leaves a tiny lull, then her voice rises: “How would you describe the relationship between Mr. Wood and Miss Fielding?”

It’s the same question I was asked. My heart canters as I wait to hear how Mum will answer.

“Becca spoke to me about Nick after she’d been staying with us a few days,” Mum says. “She said he gave her bad vibes. She even hinted that he’d behaved inappropriately toward her.”

“Did you believe that?”

“Not at all. Nick wasn’t . . . He wouldn’t. Becca was quite flirtatious toward him when she first arrived, but then she seemed to sour.”

It hits me properly then: Mum wants to see Becca convicted. She believes she did it. Or maybe she’s just grasping at the explanation, desperate for that closure.

Her niece, though. Her sister’s daughter.

The thought flickers at the edge of my mind: Better than her own daughter. She hasn’t once mentioned that I had “bad vibes” about Nick too.

Over the last few weeks, waiting for the trial, I’ve been obsessing over the many wrong conclusions I jumped to. It’s frightening how everything can be seen in a different light: the hidden arguments, the secrecy, Mum’s altered personality, and Nick’s mood swings. The way he was always watching her, hovering close to her. And her reluctance to leave me alone with him . . . her anxiety that Becca and I shouldn’t throw any accusations his way. She was scared, I think, that he might snap and blurt out the truth.

There was fear and threat under our roof—I felt it and I was right. It was just the cause I was hideously wrong about.

Sometimes I feel so angry that she didn’t just tell me she was sick. I’ve since found out that even Nick’s dad knew—that must have been what he and Mum went off to talk about at Nick’s funeral. But, of course, it’s myself I’m really furious with. For not realizing. For being so catastrophically stupid.

After Mum leaves the witness box, the prosecutor nods toward the judge.

“The Crown rests.”

60.

STEPH