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Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The House of Whispers
  3. Title Page
  4. Note to Readers
  5. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  19. Twelve
  20. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  21. Thirteen
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  25. Sixteen
  26. Seventeen
  27. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  28. Eighteen
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  32. Twenty-One
  33. Twenty-Two
  34. Twenty-Three
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  37. Twenty-Five
  38. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  39. Twenty-Six
  40. Twenty-Seven
  41. Twenty-Eight
  42. Twenty-Nine
  43. Thirty
  44. Thirty-One
  45. Thirty-Two
  46. Thirty-Three
  47. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  48. Thirty-Four
  49. Thirty-Five
  50. Thirty-Six
  51. Thirty-Seven
  52. Thirty-Eight
  53. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  54. Thirty-Nine
  55. Forty
  56. Forty-One
  57. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  58. Forty-Two
  59. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  60. Forty-Three
  61. Forty-Four
  62. Forty-Five
  63. Forty-Six
  64. Forty-Seven
  65. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  66. Forty-Eight
  67. Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019
  68. Forty-Nine
  69. Fifty
  70. Fifty-One
  71. Fifty-Two
  72. Fifty-Three
  73. Fifty-Four
  74. Fifty-Five
  75. Fifty-Six
  76. Fifty-Seven
  77. Fifty-Eight
  78. Fifty-Nine
  79. Sixty
  80. Priory Hospital North London: 20 December 2019
  81. Acknowledgements
  82. About the Publisher

I did nothing.

Fifty-Six

Of course I find out her name later. The story doesn’t make the national news, but it’s in the local paper, and her friends write tributes on Facebook. Hundreds of tributes. She wore glasses and she had dark brown hair, the sort that’s fine and a little curly, and goes flyaway in certain weather conditions or when you use too much conditioner. She liked to wear it in a high ponytail. She had that type of pale, translucent skin that burned before it tanned. She liked horse-riding, netball, reading, pizza, Beyoncé, and Maroon 5. She was a whizz at maths. She was seeing a boy; it looks like it was serious. Earlier that summer, she’d been to Thailand with her parents. She’d got the results she needed – she’d got into UCL. Her life was about to begin.

These things I find out as I pore over her Facebook page. I don’t go to her funeral, so I don’t see for myself how popular she was; how loved. I don’t see the church packed out, her shell-shocked parents choking back their tears; her friends scrunching balled-up tissues in their fists; the flowers that decorate her coffin, nor the teddy bears and bouquets that pile up at the crematorium. I dream about them, though – I dream about them over and over until it seems to me as if I was there.

And what do you do when you’ve accidentally killed someone and failed to report it? How do you live with yourself? Around and around in my head went the thought that a girl was dead because of me. That she didn’t deserve to be dead.

I sat silently in my room that summer, unable to get out of my head that shuddering moment of impact and the look in the girl’s eyes as she died. I had nightmares from which I’d wake screaming, sweating and paralyzed. Heart thudding, I’d lie there and reassure myself that it was just a dream, and, for a split second, everything was okay – and then reality would slam into me, making me cry out loud.

But it wasn’t just a dream. My nightmare was true: I had killed someone. I’d lie there, haunted by the thought that that impact I’d felt on the car – that I’d thought was a branch – was one of the last moments of that girl’s life. What part of her body had hit the car first?

The imagination can be cruel.