‘I love you,’ Mark whispers. ‘You know that, don’t you? I’ve never stopped loving you, no matter what we’ve been through, not even for a second.’

‘I know,’ I say.

‘Do you still love me?’ His words are loaded with fear.

I close my eyes and reach inside myself, searching for an answer to his question through the fear and the doubt and the nights spent lying silently in bed back to back.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I do.’

Chapter 43

I am wearing a jumper that’s so long the sleeves cover my hands, and a pair of jogging bottoms that are rolled up at the waist and above my ankles. After two days of wearing the same clothes I’ve been forced to raid my dad’s wardrobe. Mum is several sizes smaller than me and there’s no way I’d fit into her size 10 clothes without splitting something. It’s been strange spending so much time with my parents with all their idiosyncrasies on show – Dad watching game shows back to back each afternoon, flicking between channels the second the closing theme music begins, whilst Mum tucks herself up on a kitchen chair and calls a seemingly endless number of friends for ‘a quick catch-up’.

They tiptoed around me for the first twenty-four hours, asking if I was okay or if there was anything they could get me but now they largely leave me to my own devices. Not that there’s anything to do other than watch TV. I’ve spent most of my time in the spare room, running over the events of the last few weeks trying, and failing, to make sense of it. Sonia would tell me that I should let myself grieve for Billy but I can’t. Not yet.

When I woke up this morning the first thought that went through my head was, I’m going to the police today. The second thought was, I need to call Jake and Mark first.

I’ve rung Jake several times over the last couple of days. The first time I called I was worried that he’d be falling apart without me to keep an eye on him but he sounded more stable than he’s seemed in a while. His main concern was the reason why I’d left home. He thought it was because he’d confessed to hitting Billy and was hugely relieved when I said it wasn’t. He told me that he was back at work and that he’d made up with Kira. He didn’t specifically mention his Tinder ‘friend’ but he did reassure me that he wouldn’t be repeating his mistakes and that I didn’t need to worry about him.