She swayed toward him and he shot out a hand to steady her. Her neck was covered in tears. “This is my cousin.” She pointed at Becca. “She and Chris Watson did this to Freya. Because of me. It was all because of me.”

65.

EMMA

“Are you sure you won’t come and stay with me?” her mum asked, slowing the car as they approached Emma’s street.

The dark road swarmed with even more police. Lights flashed, officers gesticulated to one another. The windows of Emma’s flat peered out, like scared eyes.

“It’s not the ideal environment for rest and recovery,” her mum pointed out as she parked, then helped Emma out of the passenger side. Emma was still getting used to the crutches. She hobbled along the pavement, convinced that a distracted police officer would kick a crutch from under her. Walking beside her, Julie gaped at the chaos that had engulfed the neighborhood.

Emma kept her ears pricked, listening for information on the crackling police radios. She heard the Harlows’ names. Something about a search. Paul Harlow’s car tracked as far as . . . The rest of the sentence was inaudible.

“I think we should go back to mine,” her mum said. “I’ve got some leftover gnocchi in the fridge. I could whip up a sauce. You must be starving.”

“I’ll double my body weight if I stay with you, Mum. And it’s one a.m., not exactly gnocchi hour.”

“You’re looking too thin. The cookery gene did seem to skip a generation with you, Em.”

Emma ignored this and looked up at the Harlows’ flat. It had an air of stillness that contrasted with the flashing, simmering energy of its surroundings. She wondered where Steph and Paul were. She hoped they were together, and safe, pulling Freya into a tearful embrace at this very moment. The decisions she’d made sat like indigestible rocks in her gut. Would she ever know if they’d been the right ones?

Her eyes fell to her own flat.

“It’ll be good for me to be alone for a bit,” she told her mum. “I need to think about my future.”

“Well,” Julie said, “I wouldn’t bank on the ‘being alone’ part just yet.”

“You don’t have to stay with me.” Emma was half alarmed and half comforted at the thought that her mum might move in until her hip had healed.

“I didn’t mean me.”

Julie was pointing down the road. One of the parked vehicles wasn’t a police car: It was a small white van.

Standing beside it was Zeb.