Outside is odd. The sky is the wrong sort of colour, a murky biological green, the glass of a giant terrarium. The air is heavy and cool on my exposed skin, thighs, shoulders. There’s resistance to it, like I’m walking underwater, though the resistance might not be from the humidity but my own exhausted muscles. My mouth tastes like bacteria and salt and half-sleep, a vinegarish wash to my throat. The emptiness sloshes around in me. I don’t know what my body is burning to propel me forward but if it’s not food then I imagine it’s bits of myself. My body all at once is hollow and full of me.

I need to talk to Mary Anne. Did she want to get rid of Roxy? Maybe Booker was telling the truth but Archie had been lying – not drunk, not overwhelmed but maybe shot her on purpose. Could Mary Anne and Archie have been working together? But why? Booker didn’t even sound convinced of the moment.

Why had Roxy run into the woods?

Finding the answers is like scrambling at quicksand, each so-called breakthough brings another displacement that only sends me deeper in.

Mary Anne had to have known Archie had pulled the trigger. Archie must have told her what happened. So she put the note of intent in Roxy’s car so no one would go looking for her, and the letter in Sylvia’s mailbox. But Archie told Booker he didn’t know about the note. So why would Mary Anne not tell him – unless, of course, he was lying?

It feels vaguely like the end times. Everything washed in a strange and sombre air of quiet.

I stomp up and on to the cobblestones of the Willowwood, where a shadow clocks me through a window – I can’t see who – and I push the heavy door open. My body hangs from me comfortably. My heart beats in my chest.

Then I’m striding through the vacant lobby of the Willowwood.

‘Get out of here.’

I turn slowly, instinctively lowering my head.

Sylvia’s leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen.

‘Did Ellis tell you? I’m sorry, but Archie killed your mom,’ I say. ‘Or it might have been Mary Anne.’

‘Get out.’

‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. But we figured it out! There’re still some holes, but isn’t that important to you? Aren’t you glad? Roxy didn’t leave you, she didn’t run away or kill herself, she was –’

‘I need you to know something. I’m not a pawn in a mystery,’ she says. ‘I didn’t ask to be born in the wake of all this and I didn’t ask for any of it to be made public. Please,’ she says, ‘stop this. The legacy we’re leaving is bad enough. Who are these answers for? Because they’re not for us.’

‘Ellis wanted to know.’