But it is not something one discusses in the supermarket queue or the doctor’s waiting room or the office. I cannot say, for example, Did you see the way her left hand jerked thirty-two seconds before the moment of death? or Poor soul, he suffered from a terrible case of rigor erectus.

The police sirens scream at me. Three minutes. Perhaps less. Time feels like it is slowing down. I am sitting in the chair and she has put on some music. I’m tapping out the beat with my fingers.

Did you know that the act of murder has a rhythm all of its own, a slowed-down version of a jack-in-the-box tune?

Sing with me.

Half a pound . . .

On that first beat of time, the victim is still breathing in air; still laughing, head thrown back with the sort of abandon that implies they have no idea of what is to come.

. . . of tuppenny rice.

By the second beat, their eyes have widened. They know something is terribly wrong.

Half a pound . . .

The third beat, and they are a jerking, skin-covered shell.

. . . of treacle.

On the fourth, a caved-in memory.

That’s the way . . .

By the end of the fifth, they are nothing but an empty sack of humanity.

. . . the money goes.

On the day they moved in, I saw Olivia Lockwood sitting at the dining room table. She was wearing a green shirt and a white skirt. Drinking a glass of wine. Eating a slice of pizza. Three weeks later, I dreamed of closing my fist around her heart until it stopped.

Pop goes the weasel.

8

Sunday 29th July 2018, 9:30 P.M.

4 Hillside Crescent

Breathe.

Breathe.

Come up for air. Inhale. Exhale. Swim through the darkness. Eyelids flicker. Open. Close. Close. Open. Shadows into shapes. A chair. The wardrobe. The thrown-down light of a lamp. Water. Take a sip. Breathe. Breathe.

Adam.

Stifling air. Breathe. Slow. Inhale. Exhale. You’re okay. Another sip. Breathe. Adam. Breathe. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.

My name is Wildeve Stanton and I am in my own bed.

The sheet was tangled around the bone of her ankle, and she tried to kick it off, but her body was loose and liquid, refusing to do as she asked. She struggled to sit up but the lead in her chest pinned her to the mattress. Don’t panic. It’s the sedative. Keep breathing. Dry mouth. The taste of stale wine and despair.

Adam.

Keep breathing. Count them. One. Two. Three.

Everything was jumbled and indistinct. Flashes of memory. Voices. But it was not about words, just feelings. Not lead, but stones, piles and piles of them in the hollow of her stomach. She was walking the empty spaces, surrounded by the collapsing walls of a paper house.

Again.

On my own again.

A blackened sky lit by the dull rind of the moon. Evening, but not late. The air still held the heat of the sun and it filled her lungs, stifling her. Why was the earth not breaking open and falling into the seas? How was it her heart continued to pump when everything else in her world had stopped?