‘Are you the only person in your family with access to those knives?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘Claire,’ she says softly, laying her hand on the table, ‘what if you weren’t the one to commit the crime? What if someone else took that knife?’

‘But it can’t have been anyone else,’ I say. ‘Jake was at home, Kira was at a friend’s house and Mark was away.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Sonia’s knees click as she eases herself up from her crouched position and returns to her chair. ‘The knife could have been taken from the drawer months ago and you wouldn’t have noticed.’

‘You think …’ My heart double-beats in my chest. ‘You think Billy could have taken it?’

‘I think anyone could have. But what I’m most interested in is why you’ve jumped to the conclusion that you were the one who used the knife to commit a crime.’

‘Because it was right next to me and I was alone. Wait!’ I jolt forward in my seat. ‘The couple who found me saw a man running across the car park. He told them I’d collapsed. I thought it was Billy.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But it could have been someone else?’

‘Yes, yes, it could.’

‘Which means there’s a possibility that you witnessed a crime. Claire, I’m going to be completely honest here. I think you should go to the police and tell them what happened. Do you still have the knife?’

Yesterday, before Mark came home, I wrapped the knife in a plastic bag and hid it in an old tote bag in the bottom of my wardrobe.

‘But what if you’re wrong? What if … I don’t know … what if the man who was running away was a witness and I had stabbed someone?’

‘Why would a witness run away? And why would he ask total strangers to help you?’

‘I don’t know.’

Neither of us says anything for several minutes.

If I contact the police I could be turning in someone I love without knowing what they did or why. Just yesterday Jake was asking me if I’d still love him and Billy if either of them did something awful. What if it was him? What if I caught him stabbing someone? But he wouldn’t run away and leave me in such a confused state. Or would he? No, I won’t let myself go there. I can’t.

‘Claire,’ Sonia says. ‘I have a suggestion. In our last session we tried to make sense of the causes of your fugues so we could work on preventing them from happening again. Unfortunately it seems that it didn’t have enough of an effect so I have another suggestion.’

I eye her warily. ‘What kind of suggestion?’

‘Would you agree to be hypnotized by me?’

I make my decision in a split second. ‘Yes, yes, I would.’

Chapter 39