As she let herself into the house, she peered up at the Harlows’ windows, then down at Chris’s, seeing no movement in either. Her pulse hopped when she pushed the main door and it hit something on the other side . . . someone, in fact. Steph was standing behind it, reaching into the mail basket attached to the reverse of their letterbox. She drew back, holding a small white parcel.

“Steph,” Emma said.

Her neighbor’s face was ashen, emerging out of the loop of a green scarf. Emma tried to compose herself to ask, Are you okay, any news, what did the school say? but stalled as her neighbor dug her hand into the envelope she was clutching, and pulled out a hardback book.

“Did you order this?” Steph asked.

Emma was taken aback by her urgent tone. “Erm . . . no.”

“It isn’t yours?”

Emma squinted at the title. Confusion made the words blur a little. How to Be a Better Parent. The cover showed a woman in a yellow dress and a boy in his early teens, facing each other in opposite armchairs, the woman leaning toward the boy, as if listening earnestly.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“It came through the door, but it isn’t addressed to anybody . . .” Steph’s eyes glazed as though her thoughts were galloping. Emma glanced at the book again, a flame of anxiety igniting in the back of her mind.

She hadn’t ordered it. That much was true. So why was it making her feel so strange?

Steph opened it, and gasped as orange liquid dripped out of its middle. Emma jerked back, clapping a hand over her mouth. The rest of a crushed raw egg slopped out of the book’s pages and spread in a sticky puddle at Steph’s feet.

“What the hell?” Emma said into her palm.

The sight of the egg sliming their hall floor, some still leaking from the book in Steph’s hands, brought back a sickening memory from years before. Steph was like a statue, holding the book open, staring at the blobs of yolk and fragments of shell clinging to its pages.

“I don’t . . .” Steph’s voice was soft and hoarse. “What does this mean?”

“I have no idea.” Emma wondered whether her neighbor could tell her heart was booming, paranoia creeping up around her neck. There’s no reason this would be aimed at you, she told herself. The Harlows are the victims here.

“Our doorstep was egged two weeks ago,” Steph said.

Emma snapped to attention. “Really? I never saw that.”