She could possibly persuade herself that the first time—killing Ian Ferguson—had been a spur-of-the-moment act: she had seized an opportunity that fell across her path, without premeditation or even full self-awareness. But she couldn’t delude herself about John Santino. With him, her criminal actions were planned with complete awareness and undeniable homicidal intent. After the second murder, Paula understood that she had crossed over into some other dimension, irrevocably, permanently.

She must’ve hoped—probably unconsciously, certainly childishly—that if she told Anita, then she could share the burden of this with someone. But she couldn’t share it. That was impossible as well as being unfair and cruel to her friend.

Paula was alone with this. She had to accept that she was alone now.

Reclining in the driver’s seat, sleepless, powerless to scrape unwelcome thoughts out her head, she stared through the window as the headlights of passing cars washed over the dark trees. Paula wondered if this was what it felt like to go mad. She thought about patients she’d dealt with when they were in the process of slipping into a psychotic episode. But she didn’t think she was experiencing the onset of a psychotic break, because this mental disorientation made its own painful sense, given what had happened and what she’d done. This was appropriate anguish.

She must’ve dozed off for a while, probably a couple of hours, because when she jerked awake, the sky was starting to lighten. She returned the seat to upright and realised there were two semitrailers parked in the lay-by.

She clambered stiffly out of the car to stretch her limbs and then saw one of the truck drivers was pissing into the scrub, steam rising from the stream of urine in the chill of the early morning air. When the truckie saw her there, he turned his body away modestly and then, as he returned to his semitrailer, he nodded in greeting. The guy was unthreatening but it made Paula uncomfortable to have anyone look at her.

It was now thumpingly clear that she couldn’t go back to work at Marrickville Family Practice. She couldn’t handle seeing her own patients, couldn’t bear to have their eyes on her, especially the patients who’d known her for years.

She walked in agitated loops on the gravel near her car, holding her phone, trying to think of the wording. She waited until seven forty-five, when Li-Kim would have arrived to open up the practice for the day.

Li-Kim picked up the call straight away. ‘Paula. Hi.’

‘Hi. Listen … um … I’m not in great shape.’

‘Oh no. Are you ill?’ Li-Kim asked.

‘Not ill, but I think everything … it’s kind of caught up with me.’

‘Oh, Paula, I can hear in your voice, you sound rattled.’

‘Can’t really talk about it right now.’

‘No, no, totally understandable,’ Li-Kim responded.