I decide to walk towards the woods, still feeling guilty from driving under the influence the other day. It’s a long walk but I don’t mind; I could use the time to think, to prepare myself for what happens next. It feels strange to be so sad about someone I only knew very briefly but I am, especially knowing he died when I was angry with him. I don’t know why that makes me feel worse; it’s not as if he knew or even cared what I might have been thinking after he was gone. As for Hannah, we said hello now and then, that was it, and yet I feel responsible, as though maybe I could have saved her if only I had tried. As I walk I think about what else they might find up there. Is the truth finally going to come out?

Almost every low garden wall I pass is made of pebbles or stones, adding to the fairytale feeling of this place. Apt, really, when I think of the grim goings-on. I try to remember how I used to feel about it, before I knew what I know. I thought it was the prettiest place imaginable. I have since realised that what we see is not always all there is. That applies to people as well as places.

I reach the theatre and consider turning back. Walking to the woods means I will be walking past the road my house was on. My mother may well still be there. I haven’t spoken to her since the day I ran away and I have made no enquiries as to whether she is alive or dead. Like Shrödinger’s cat, as long as I don’t look, she is alive and crying into the sink where I left her. But I can’t avoid it much longer. Maybe the woods were never my destination, maybe I always knew I would end up back at that house. I had hoped when I left that I would never see it again, but I have avoided it so consciously that it has become a magnet, always there, ready to receive me, pulling me to make me face the truth about myself. About what I did.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Then