“That was all it was supposed to be,” Becca said. “That was all I wanted to do, but . . .” A sob jerked her body and caused the knife to break her skin, a tiny cut that sent a trickle of blood down her still-blotchy neck. Steph watched it run over the soft creases. They’d both aged, yet time had healed nothing, it seemed.

“It wasn’t enough,” Becca said. “I needed you to suffer.”

“So you made her suffer?” Steph cupped her hand beneath Becca’s chin and thrust her head back against the wall.

She could see the tension in Becca’s stretched throat, the hyper-awareness of the blade. Her cousin’s voice came out strangled: “Chris was only supposed to take her away for a couple of days. Just long enough to put you through hell.”

Steph banged Becca’s head against the plasterwork. “He kidnapped her?”

“He was meant to bring her back, no harm done. It was not planned this way. You have to believe—”

“Why should I? How could you do this? Freya’s innocent. She was your family—” Her unintentional switch to the past tense made something snap inside. And Becca’s “no harm done” was loaded with the message that the opposite was true. The message that a jacket soaked in blood might represent exactly what it seemed to. A foregone conclusion that strangers watching the news had probably already reached, because assuming the worst wouldn’t bring down their whole world.

Steph’s left hand pushed into Becca’s face, clawing soft eyelids, the squashy cartilage of a nose. There was white noise in her head and she was dimly aware of her cousin moaning; Steph was hurting her but she didn’t know how badly or whether she’d be able to stop.

Becca began to fight back. Steph felt her cousin’s hand against her chest, trying to shove her away. Her own hands were around Becca’s neck now, the knife jutting at an angle from her right.

“Please, Steph,” Becca gasped. “You don’t . . . she . . .” Her left arm flailed, swiping for the knife. Steph jerked the blade away, then grabbed Becca’s hair and pulled: a childish act of violence as if they were teenagers again. Becca cried out, and Steph felt herself splitting in two: one part wanting her cousin to feel all the pain that was gripping her own heart, another horrified at the prospect of harming her. Steph had killed for her mum all those years ago, and now perhaps she would kill for her daughter, destroying what was left of her own life in the process.

She shifted her palm back over Becca’s nose and mouth. Becca thrashed again with her left hand, shouting something incoherent, and Steph imagined she was driving her into the wall, through the bricks, making her disappear.

Then Becca became still.