This wasn’t going to end with a slow stop. It would be too hard and too fast and Heath was too far gone to be reasoned with and the pitching in the pit of my gut told me that this was last-moment material. I’d spent the majority of my time since Dad left wondering what this would look like. Sort of fitting, I guessed. It occurred to me that maybe we’d be caught on surveillance footage, swerving, smashing, leaving, and in a couple of months the comments would pile up, and a girl somewhere else who’d just lost her dad would be thinking, watching, trying to piece together the lives of the people who died, wondering who they were or how this could have happened …

‘Heath!’ June screamed. She really did scream this, shrill on the vowels. I had never heard her so afraid. The sound tore into every part of me. ‘Stop!’

‘You stop! You fucking stop!’

‘You sound insane,’ she said. ‘There’s no mass conspiracy. Sydney didn’t do anything wrong. She did nothing. Neither did her dad. You do this. You did all of this to yourself.’

Heath choked on a sob; was it real? I couldn’t tell and I guess it didn’t matter. ‘I love you. That’s not wrong.’

‘It is. Because it’s impossible to love someone and treat them the way you treated me. It’s impossible.’

Fast. We were going too fast.

‘I have given you every good thing you have,’ Heath said.

‘You’ve given me shit,’ June said. ‘Sydney’s dad talked to fucking Child Protection Services, Heath. That’s real-world stuff, OK? That’s real-world stuff that you can’t just wave away. You can’t just get out of that.’

‘It was bullshit! All of it. This, Sydney, the fucking therapy – it was all deliberate sabotage and you know it. Everyone tries to take everything I have. I’m a victim, June. We’re both victims. Why can’t you see that?’

‘I wanted to help you. You took advantage of that. Of me.’

Heath sobbed again. ‘I begged you. I reminded you of everything, of how volatile this whole fucking thing is and how delicate, really, truly delicate, and you didn’t even care. You didn’t even care that it was gonna hurt me, and that I was gonna hurt myself. And now, look. We all have to fucking care.’

We took a turn then and I tried to get my bearings: the street sign.

RIVER STYX ROAD.

He was driving towards the river.

‘Holy shit, I can’t believe I’ve lost you to some dyke!’ He slammed the steering wheel. ‘I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it, June. Were you that desperate?’