The diary was sitting on the kitchen table, awaiting its trip to the recovery cafe. The question was, could she go there now after receiving the note? Could she go there at all?

The diary now reminded Karen of a scary book she’d once taken out of the library. The horror story had been about an evil house that had preyed on its owners, finding out all their secrets and using those secrets against them. The book had disturbed Karen, so much so that she’d taken it back to the library without finishing it. She’d even put it in the garden shed until she could return it.

Jack had laughed at her fears, but then things had started to go wrong in the house. Little things, inexplicable things. Jack thought she was just being forgetful, like when the gas ring was left on and a tea towel lying close by caught fire. But Karen knew she’d turned all the rings off when she’d finished making the meal. She was always careful about that. So the very next day she’d taken the book back to the library without finding out whether the family had defeated the evil presence in their house, or whether they’d sold up and moved away.

Staring at the diary, Karen suspected she was in the same scenario. The evil from forty-five years ago had never really gone away, it had been lurking there all those years just waiting for her to pick up that diary again.

I should have burned it like Jack told me to, she thought. She’d intended doing that, but for some reason never could. If she did, she’d reasoned, she would never be able to fill in the blanks of what had happened.

Your parents took you away from that street so you wouldn’t be reminded of what happened there. They wanted you to forget.

Karen had done what Jack had advised most of the time, but not with the diary. There she had defied him. And that decision had come back to haunt her.

But I can at least get it out of the house, she told herself. She would give it to Marge. The house would be free of it. The diary could no longer taunt her by its presence.

But what about the note? a small voice said. Should she show them the note too?

Karen immediately knew that if she did, she would appear guilty of something.

And she didn’t know what that something was. Or did she?

She reached for the diary, and in that moment in her head she heard a frightened voice repeating the same words over and over again.

You have to help me.

28

McLaughlin had read his statement and signed it. The flourish with which he’d done the latter reminded McNab of the way celebrities gave their autographs, certain in the knowledge of their own fame.

By that stage, McNab was finding it increasingly difficult not to kick McLaughlin under the table, or even better, in the balls. However, he’d done such a thing once before in a not dissimilar situation and the boss had taken the blame for it.