‘Why are you asking about my mom?’

‘It’s nothing. Really.’

‘You can tell me whatever. We’re a team.’

‘I know, Ellis. Really. Don’t worry.’

Nothing good will come out of me telling him my suspicions. It could go two ways: he’d either be upset at me even for suggesting that Sylvia could have done something like that, or – well, he could never trust his own mother again. I can’t do that to him.

Unless I had definitive proof.

‘So what’s our next move, then?’ Ellis asks.

For the first time I don’t know and I tell him this. ‘Just – let me think today. I’ll let you know.’

I surprise myself with how afraid I am. Maybe I’m imagining it, but Mary Anne seems to be keeping a closer eye on me than usual.

I have the inexplicable sense that everything is on the verge of falling apart. We’ve reached the precipice and we’re seconds away from the descent.

I’m feeling like I have less and less to lose. I don’t care about Mary Anne’s temper. I need to speak to Archie. Archie, who I’ve barely seen say two words to anyone my entire time here.

My mouth runs dry. What’s the scenario? Something happens in the woods, no one wants anyone to find it, or see what it is, someone who probably has a high standing in town, who’s capable of making a change like this so quickly. I re-read the article I found last night in a fever.

When there’s a slow moment I catch him in the kitchen.

‘Archie, I desperately need to talk to you.’

‘OK.’

‘Do you remember the night Roxy went missing?’

‘Roxy?’

‘Roxy Raines. Or Catherine O’Hare. Do you remember her?’

‘Listen.’

‘What, Archie?’

‘Listen. That’s her.’

‘What?’ There’s nothing; the only sound I can hear is the light chatter from the diner and the beeping in Mary Anne’s office.

‘That’s her.’

‘What are you –’ I look behind me, in case Mary Anne is coming. I’m floundering. ‘Do you know anything about the woods? Have you ever been in the woods?’

He doesn’t say anything.

‘Archie? Do you know about the woods?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘but I can’t help you. I just can’t help you. I just can’t.’

‘Archie?’

‘I just can’t help you.’

‘It’s fine –’

‘I just can’t.’

It’s one in the morning and I’m thinking of the woods.