Oli slips past the twins’ closed doors and down the hallway, clutching her old laptop to her chest, a shoebox under her arm. Her skin is clammy and flushed from sex, her limbs loosened by endorphins, but she’s more alert than she has been all day. Nathan didn’t leave until almost eleven, and she was asleep when Dean came upstairs. He was gentle but determined; he is always so physical, so intense. Afterwards, he fell asleep immediately, his arm resting across her abdomen. But she lay there, the image of Nicole’s dead body playing on her mind.

Oli opens the door at the end of the passage and flicks on the light. Isabelle’s room. The built-in wardrobe runs the length of the wall opposite and goes all the way to the ceiling. On the cream sofa bed are several folded blankets, alongside a trio of case-less pillows. A piano keyboard stands in the corner, some sheet music propped on its ledge. The curtains are partly open, and the window behind the uncluttered oak desk looks down onto Survey Drive.

She eases the door shut and gazes out from behind the glass. After a few moments, a red car slowly sails past. There’s a flurry of movement near the front fence—a possum darting up a tree, or perhaps an adventurous cat. Pulling away, she sets her laptop on the small side table that faces the door, and plugs her charger into the wall. Her old machine whirs to life, making faint electronic noises.

She places the shoebox on the oak desk. Smooths her hand across the glossy grain.

Isabelle used to love this room. Dean said she fed the twins in here when they were babies. Later, it became her study.

Another car screeches into the street, and its headlights sweep across the front gate, lighting up the driveway. Its motor is revved obnoxiously as it passes the house, then the night settles into silence again. Oli sits, her feet tucked under her legs in the leather office chair, and tugs off the cardboard lid. Six notebooks and dozens of memory sticks. All have labels: little white pieces of paper sealed with sticky tape to protect the names she wrote on them. When she left The Daily, she spent an entire weekend saving all of her old pieces, research notes and contact lists, wondering if it would prove to be a complete waste of time. Clearly not.

She flicks through one of the notebooks. Her messy shorthand fills every page, and so many words are underlined that any attempt at emphasis has clearly failed. It’s both familiar and foreign. Her writing has evolved over the years; it’s less round these days, more clipped and impatient.