I can smell the alcohol, too, that wafted from his body the night he killed her. He’d been drinking all day before he’d gone out to his club; drinking to forget what he’d done. I squeeze my eyes closed as I see his face, puce with rage, his eyes, bloodshot and bulbous, as he strikes out at Sarah. I hear it: the dull thud, as her head smashes heavily against concrete.

I smelled the brandy on his breath when he crouched down in the garden beside me, trying to wake her. Later, up here in the bedroom, I could smell it when he lay his heavy bulk on her bed. I tried to tell him about her odd breathing. He wouldn’t listen to me. ‘Go back to bed,’ he slurred, and then grunted and rolled over. Rolled onto her.

‘Karla, please open the door, darling,’ my mother calls again, as I press my hands hard to my ears, trying to block out his snoring, which is reverberating in my head. ‘Please come out and let me talk to you.’

I was unconscious, Sarah says.

But did he hurt you? I ask the question I’ve asked over and over that’s driven me halfway to madness. Did he touch you?

I couldn’t breathe. That’s why I died. He suffocated me, but he didn’t touch me, Sarah finally answers me. I didn’t die because of you. I died because of him.

I close my eyes, relief flooding every vein in my body. I’d thought that he… For so long, I’d wondered. Even in my childhood, it occurs to me, I must have known that my father was a man who was deeply flawed. Did he deserve to die for what he’d done? For causing so much hurt? For killing Sarah? For killing me?

I don’t know. I’m so tired of searching for answers. Keeping secrets. The tears and the lies and the arguments. I crave sleep; deep, dark and dreamless. Escape from my conscience.

Will I hurt when I land, I wonder? Will the physical pain be harder to bear than the emotional pain? I can’t endure that any more. I glance to my side, down to the bone-crushing ground below. I’m watching a leaf curl and flutter gently in the wind when my phone rings, causing me to jolt.

Jason. Hope rises inside me as I recognise his ringtone. He will have seen the papers or heard the news. By now, he will know that this latest story has broken. How will he feel when he realises how twisted a story it’s become? What will he do then? Stifling the sob climbing my throat, I pull my phone from my pocket, and accept the call. I don’t speak.

‘Karla, where are you?’ he shouts, his voice frantic.