Stabbing her fork into her plate of food, she ate ravenously, unable to remember the last time she had let herself enjoy a meal with such abandon. What a waste, she thought, to deprive herself of something so wonderful for so long. And what had it been for?

No, not what, but who?

She thought of Anna, how rarely she had eaten, and how small and brittle her body had been. Who had she been dieting for?

That wasn’t a diet, though, what Anna had been doing. It was a whole other ball game.

A memory, a recent one, flickered in Paula. Heaving Anna across the balcony, feeling the snap of her arm. The tears had sprung to Anna’s one good eye then, and Paula had watched, mesmerised, knowing that the broken woman on the ground in front of her probably hadn’t cried real tears in an awfully long time.

Her stomach turned over. The last of the lasagne refused to be swallowed. She chugged back a glass of water and put her fork down.

She tried to push the thought away, dismiss the recollection that quite suddenly threatened to overwhelm her. But that was what she had done with Carl, and it had been an error.

She swivelled in her chair and looked out to the dark black sea. She lowered her head and let the awareness in.

Chapter 27

Before

I never told anyone what really happened the night I found my mother dead in our house. Of course, some of it was known. Once Carl was dead, I dialled 999, stuttering over whether I needed the police or an ambulance.

‘I found them like that,’ I told the policemen as they surveyed the two dead people in my mother’s bedroom.

Most of it was true. I hadn’t moved my mother, and Carl remained where he had died. The only anomaly was the needle, now resting in his cold, stiff fingers instead of where it had been.

In mine.

‘What time did you arrive?’ they asked me.

‘Just before I called you,’ I replied.

I thought of the neighbours, but didn’t worry that they had seen me. Nobody saw me. Nobody ever had.

I watched them take my mother and Carl out. They loaded them into a private ambulance. I felt an absurd need to wave. At the last moment, I saw Kevin smoking in his front garden.

He locked eyes with me, just for a moment. I nodded to him. He tilted his cigarette in return.

‘Sorry,’ he mouthed.

I nodded again, slipped inside and closed the door behind me.

Later, after the funeral, I returned to Edinburgh.

He was there, the boy I had been dating. We spent the night in his room, in an apartment off-campus.