As she said it, she felt an unexpected bud of hope. Maybe this really could be a fresh start for them. Maybe, once they’d got through this, she could even try again with the shop, rebuild her confidence, the vision she’d had . . . After all, she was still the owner. Perhaps there was a reason she’d procrastinated over letting the estate agent relist it.

Her optimism grew a little stronger: Maybe Freya would be found too. Emma would go back to hearing laughter from above, smelling bakery bread and Friday-night takeaways. And she’d feel differently about it now. Not envious or obsessive or excluded, but relieved, and sorry for her own part in their ordeal, and connected to her neighbors because they’d both lost their children and got them back, in the end.

66.

CHRIS

He felt an avalanche of release once he’d made the decision to confess. The weight lifted from his chest and, for a fleeting moment, he was almost elated. He didn’t realize he was crying until he felt the moisture on his collar and saw Johnson watching him with that scathing expression.

They were back in the interrogation room, camera rolling, Chris alone on his side of the table. The elation crashed away, but he knew he had to go through with it. For his own sanity, for Freya’s parents, who were trapped, not knowing, not deserving this. For Freya herself.

Ford recited the date and time and other details. Chris wished he could just open up his brain and show them the memory of that day, rather than have to describe it in words.

“We’ve established that Freya Harlow had been blackmailing you,” Ford summarized brusquely, “and that you were contacted by an unknown woman who offered you money to make Freya think her mother was having an affair. This woman then offered you more money to take Freya away.”

Chris nodded. He couldn’t stop imagining Vicky’s reaction if she could hear this. The hope he’d dared to feel when they’d spoken on the phone seemed absurd now, as did all his attempts to hide what he’d done. He would release Vicky from any obligation to him. He didn’t want her to visit him in prison, wait for him, put her life on pause.

“Which brings us to March the fifteenth,” Ford said. “Tell us what happened.”

Chris sat up as straight as he could. His body felt soft, withered.

“I planned to get us ‘lost’ during the driving lesson, and somehow lose Freya’s phone as well, keep her out of touch long enough to panic the Harlows . . . To be honest, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull it off, and I was having serious second thoughts.