Should she be fighting for her father’s reputation or was that disrespectful to the family she had lost? It was odd that her father had been buried next to her mother and brother, given what he had done. Unless … A cool breeze curled in through the crack in her car window, raising goosebumps on her skin. She had always avoided the media coverage of what happened for fear of reports about her father. But what if they weren’t labelling him a monster? What if they were defending him? She slipped her phone from her pocket and typed in the details of the Facebook group. Chewing her bottom lip she requested to join. Her Facebook page was marked as private, and she was there under her mother’s maiden name, Sarah Noble. Nobody but Richie should know who she was. Her heart gave a little flutter as her request was immediately accepted. This was either going to make her day better, or a whole lot worse.

She scrolled through the numerous posts, with pictures, maps and more. No wonder she’d had to hire security to keep people away from Blackhall. The group was rife with speculation about Angelica’s murder. She swept past all the fresh comments, on to the older ones. There were so many theories, interspersed with warnings that anything negative about the family would be removed and the user banned. She glanced through the admins, seeing the name Damien Richardson. So that’s why he said the group was a ‘safe space’. But how was her father not to blame? She had been there. She’d heard her mother cry out, ‘Not my little girl,’ after calling Sarah’s father’s name. The hairs stood sentry on her arms. Not my little girl. Why not our little girl? Thinking back, her mother always used the term in the collective. It was always our children, even when they argued. Her mum always said that raising children was a family effort, you never did it alone.

Sarah automatically tugged at her hair. She had never stopped to consider that. Her memories of that night had been pushed into the darkest chambers of her mind, where they rusted, degraded … But I saw him, she thought. Didn’t I?

Her eyes lit on a comment from Sharon Young in New York. ‘Sarah was in the wardrobe when the shooter walked in. It was dark. She was in shock. What if it wasn’t her dad?’

‘But he called my name …’ Sarah said, chilled by the theory. Her bones rigid, she had peered through the tiny keyhole. Clutching herself, her teeth had chattered, caught in the frozen grip of fear.