Being with the only other person who knew might be the answer.

Louisa filled the bottles with powdered milk, shaking them violently as she thought about Oliver and Melissa.

Cold grass under her feet.

‘Can I blag one of them off you?’

A sense of dread.

Fear.

Running.

Falling.

Blood.

Louisa shook the vision away. While some of her flashes of memory could now be explained, this couldn’t so easily be tagged to ‘back then’. This felt recent. Something must have happened the night of her party to trigger the concealed memories to begin resurfacing. And Louisa now considered that her mind was mixing up the two separate things. Some flashes were from the night of the accident, but some, the cold grass, the person asking for a cigarette, they were from her fortieth party.

When Oliver had told her the secret, she’d assumed her visions had nothing to do with Melissa. But now she wasn’t so sure. After all, if she’d successfully covered up something in the past, there was every chance she could be covering up something now. For the moment Louisa couldn’t afford to worry that she’d done something else – she had to focus on the reason for her first episode of dissociative amnesia to begin with.

Oliver had been adamant he wouldn’t tell Louisa who the victim was, where he’d disposed of her body. How. While she thought at the time he was protecting her by ensuring she didn’t know the details, Louisa wondered now if there was an element of control. Oliver was controlling what she knew. That didn’t sit well with her. Knowledge was power.

Having had no luck on the internet, Louisa refused to give up trying to find out who the victim was. She’d have to opt for something else – research the original missing persons case at the library, search out the archived newspapers for missing persons reports for herself. Oliver said that the woman had been missing for a year prior to the accident. This was Devon, surely there weren’t that many missing people reported? She could at least narrow down a list and go from there.

The thought of taking Noah with her whilst she was researching struck a horrible chord in Louisa. She couldn’t take him, wouldn’t. Though she hadn’t spoken to Tiff since the frosty reception she’d given Louisa at her house yesterday, she’d ask her to look after Noah while she went to the library. And when she got back, she could confront her about what was going on.

Not trusting herself to speak, Louisa tapped out a text.

Any chance you could have Noah for a few hours today? xx