It’s because the future’s always been the best bit, the bit that’s not the past – it’s not losing your family, or finding them when you’re eighteen and being hurt by them over and over again; it’s not finding your husband’s hidden stash of drugs for the twenty-seventh time, and having to believe his lame promises that he’ll give up, he swears, he means it this time; it’s not realising that your lover, who’s supposed to have hidden depths, is nothing more than a blank hard surface; it’s not being handed a small white book by a man who looks at you in a way that stops your breath and makes you want to run …

The future is none of those things. It’s where the good things are finally going to start happening. That’s why it’s not scary.

I thought everyone knew this.

From: [email protected]

Sent: 11 April 2016 09.21:34

To: [email protected]

Subject: Origami by Kim Tribbeck

Dear Susan

Thanks for your email. I’m so glad you love the book as much as I do! And I’m delighted to hear that your jaw hit the floor at the Liv and Gibbs revelation. Mine did too. I agree it’s a legal minefield, but it’s such an intriguing part of the story and I suspect Kim might dig in her heels and refuse to publish without it. Surely Nordlein and Vinter are covered on the legal front by the simple fact of the Liv and Gibbs element being verifiably true?

I’m afraid I haven’t been able to talk Kim out of her favourite hobby of defending Billy Dead Mates on Twitter and Facebook. She jokily refers to it as ‘my pro bono work’. ‘Who would you rather I defend?’ she said when I first broached the subject. ‘Joanna Lumley? Prince George the royal toddler? All the people who’ve done nothing wrong and are being vilified by nobody?’ I didn’t give up quite straight away, but I’m afraid I lost the battle. Kim’s argument is 1) she’s not for a moment claiming murder is acceptable, and 2) blanket condemnation and writing people off as evil only adds to the sum total of pain in the world.

Do you think her portrayal is too sympathetic? I felt for poor old Billy when I read Kim’s book, in a way that I didn’t at all when I heard the news reports. I’m afraid that at that point my only thought was, ‘What a monster!’ We should be prepared for some negative feedback along those lines, I think: that Billy’s depicted as being almost a regular, flawed human like the rest of us, albeit one who took a senseless obsession too far. Though I’ve read and reread the manuscript and there’s absolutely nothing in there than condones or justifies the murders.