Heathrow is a bubble of suspended reality. People drink fizzy wine and eat burgers at six a.m., brush their teeth in public toilets, and snooze on plastic chairs surrounded by strangers. Some are moving between different time zones—they’ve flown in from tomorrow or will land yesterday. There’s a feeling of anonymity, even though everyone’s had their identity rigorously checked.

I weave among it all, cleaning toilets, glad to be pretty much invisible. I hear spurts of conversation, snatches of lives, the constant drone of flight announcements in multiple languages. My skin smells of bleach and my fingertips are cracked.

Often I think about the day—two years ago, almost exactly—when I stood on the boundary of a different airport, watching planes rising into the dusk, holding my breath as one swept overhead. I remember how, in the months that followed, I clung to the image of that fluid starry sky whenever I couldn’t stand to be in the new reality I’d created for myself. The one in which I was a killer and a coward.

And I’m still both of those things. I hide here among the daily swarm of travelers, then go home or to the hospital, my head ducked to the outside world. Sometimes I think I’m as much a prisoner as Becca, but then I feel even more guilty: How would I know what she’s going through? Just once have I had the guts to visit her in prison, and her flinty gaze cut right through me.

By now I know the length and rhythm of the journey from Heathrow to the hospital. When we first moved here, it took me a while to get used to the rush and crush of the Underground. I’m not sure why Mum thought London would be a good place to start over. She talked about the specialist hospitals, but maybe she thought it would be somewhere to blend in; maybe she realized I wanted to hide. I still wonder how much she suspects about what really happened to Nick. She accepted the idea of Becca as a killer so wholeheartedly. But if some pushed-down part of her does know I was involved, what does that mean? Does motherly love trump what she had with Nick—enough to forgive me, even protect me?

Auntie Rach and Uncle Jack never turned their backs on Becca. But Becca pushed them away, refused to see them. Mum reckons Becca blames them for her shoddy defense lawyer, but I think there’s more to it. I don’t know if I’d want Mum visiting me in prison either. Sitting across a table from each other, like we used to in our flat after school, except surrounded by other prisoners, watched by guards. I’m not sure I could stand it. To this day I’m still anxious for her to be proud of me.