I know you were sleeping with Billy. I know about the tattoo. I know you were responsible for his disappearance. And so do the police.

I am so shocked I drop the phone.

I pick it back up again and turn it over in my hands, being careful not to accidentally hit the send button. Whoever wrote the text didn’t send it. It’s still in compose mode. The mobile is a Samsung. Black. Basic. I don’t know anyone who owns a phone like this.

Where has it come from? Did someone give it to me? Did I steal it?

I tip the contents of my handbag onto my skirt. I find my phone and use the light to go through my belongings. I find my usual house keys, purse, tissues, make-up compact and something else, something that wasn’t in my bag when I left Mum and Dad’s this afternoon. A crumpled Carphone Warehouse plastic bag. In the very corner of the bag is a receipt. I angle the phone towards it so I can read the faint text.

Sim Free Samsung E1200 Mob – £14.99

Virgin Sim Pack – £1.00

And beneath it are the last four digits of my bank card.

I bought the phone.

Sonia told me that my fugues are caused by things that arouse my suspicions. What was the last thing I saw? Images flash up in my mind – Queen’s Road, Mama Valerie’s café, Lloyd, Kira – but the pictures are dark and indistinct and the harder I try to bring them into focus the more they blur together.

Whatever I saw on Queen’s Road it was enough to convince me to buy a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and compose an anonymous text. But who to? I must have copied the number from my mobile. I press the wake-up button on the side of my iPhone but nothing happens.

I press it again.

Nothing.

I press the button harder and the phone vibrates in my hand as a white swirl appears on the screen and then disappears.

The screen goes black again.

Using the light has drained the last of the battery.

It’s all I can do not to hurl it into the bushes. There are seven people in the two houses on the other side of the road: Mark, Jake, Stephen, Kira, Lloyd, Liz and Caleb. If you’d asked me a year ago to name the people I trusted more than anyone else in the world I would have said their names along with Mum and Dad, Caroline and Billy.

When I stopped outside the Mama Valerie’s I was convinced that Billy had secretly had a tattoo of his design inked somewhere on his body but I must have seen or heard something that made me change my mind.

I know you were sleeping with Billy. I know about the tattoo. I know you were responsible for his disappearance. And so do the police.