As Paula drove out of the car park, she noticed Ruby and Jye climb onto a dirt bike parked around the corner from the supermarket. The boy hopped on the front, tucked in front of his sister, who reached her arms around him to grasp the handlebars. They puttered off on the little motorbike down an unlit side street, heading towards the escarpment.

Back in the serviced apartment, Paula unpacked her food supplies into the bar fridge and cooked eggs on toast. Once she’d hoisted the suitcase onto the bed and unpacked her small pile of new clothing, she felt profoundly tired—today had been a long drive—but she knew sleep was far out of reach without chemical aid. She took a temazepam, washing it down with a not-inconsiderable slug of vodka.

Anita and Paula had survived minor fallings-out in the past. Usually it would be because Anita had overreacted to something, with Paula being slightly condescending and infuriatingly reasonable in a way that only provoked Anita to behave more unreasonably. But very quickly, the two of them would make up and their friendship would be as strong as ever. They could both trust in that pattern.

In any past conflicts, Anita had been quick to admit she was an idiot and offer apologies. She was always quick to go to guilt.

And she was remorseful now, no question—guilty of a monumental failure of imagination not to have understood what was happening to Paula. Anita had been distracted by her own suffering and keen to recruit Paula into their exclusive club of Stacey’s Grieving Best Friends. She hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that it was different—much worse—for Paula.

Paula was already dealing with the death of her beautiful husband. Paula was the one who had been living with those kids for months. She was the one who’d walked into the house and found their bodies. She’d seen Matt shoot himself in the head. Anita berated herself for not fully weighing the trauma of that on any human being.

She’d been too quick to assume Dr Kaczmarek could handle everything as she always did. Arguably—and she could see this now—it had been harder on Paula than on a regular person. Paula had always accepted the obligation and responsibility to take care of other people, so the tragedy in that house would have been even more crushing.

Anita felt foolish for ever indulging in ridiculous hyperbolic talk about killing dangerous men. She’d only been venting, but still, it was a dangerous way to talk, given the raw emotional state Paula had been in.