She stumbled in the door of her flat and flaked out on the bed, sobbing like a teenage girl. In the last twenty-four hours she’d lost her best friend and the man she loved. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that they were the only two people who could’ve helped Anita get her head around what had happened, and now she couldn’t talk to either of them.

NINETEEN

THE MOMENT AFTER ANITA WALKED OUT OF THE EARLWOOD house, it hit Paula with glaring clarity: she couldn’t stay there anymore. Any good memories of Remy, Stacey or the kids that might be embedded in the house had been pushed out by ugly ones. And because of her own actions, and now what she’d done to Anita, Paula no longer belonged there.

She threw a change of clothes in an overnight bag and drove without any direction or plan, letting the stream of traffic take her, allowing the flow of traffic lights and turning lanes to make the decisions, until she ended up on the highway west out of the city.

As she drove, she found herself saying words aloud—‘selfish’, ‘stupid’—like verbal slaps to her own face. She had vowed never to tell anyone what she’d done, but pressure had built up inside, a feverish need to share her secret with someone, and Paula had given in to that. But dumping it on Anita hadn’t lessened the burden. All she’d managed to do was load this toxic information onto her friend, who didn’t deserve it. She should never have told her. There was no excuse. It was unforgivable.

On the dark highway, Paula became aware that she was losing her sense of proprioception, unable to feel her body in the car seat, unable to orientate herself or the car in space. There was a risk she would run off the road or, worse, career into the lane of oncoming traffic and hurt someone. She pulled over to the verge and anchored herself by concentrating on the smoothness of the steering wheel under her palms and the tautness of the seatbelt against her collarbone.

After a few minutes, she steered back out onto the highway, fearing that if she stayed still, she would have to face up to what she’d done and it would be unbearable. She knew that wasn’t logical.

Further on, somewhere past Lithgow, her eyes felt so gritty it was unsafe to keep driving. She parked in a truck lay-by, tipped the seat back and tried to sleep. Maybe if she got a few hours of rest, she could think her way through this, make some proper decisions.

But sleep was impossible. There were too many thoughts scratching around inside her skull.