But under all of that, a new seed was budding. She felt a strange and very strong sense of something else: relief. The evidence – and that is what it was – was gone, and with it, all tangible connection to the crime. She thought about the blue glow of the luminol and wondered if she might one day find a way to live with it. She might even be able to trick herself into believing she imagined the whole thing. She might be able to repress the memory itself, to push it down somewhere so deep and dark that even she couldn’t—

The sound of a car pulling into the driveway cut through her thoughts. It sounded like Ray’s truck. If that was true, then a difficult conversation was about to happen. She slammed the palm of her hand against the roller door’s Open button and it clicked to life, rising an inch at a time, slowly revealing the landscape beyond.

There was one police cruiser in the driveway – that was the car she’d heard – and two more parked on the nature strip, wheels already sinking in the wet soil around the drooping she-oak. Doors were open. Officers were spilling out in windbreakers and heavy black boots. Cherry lights were flashing against the dull late-afternoon gloom. Dorothy Fancher was huddled beneath her umbrella, watching it all with a giddy look in her eyes.

The officers were wearing gloves and carrying empty bags and boxes marked with big red letters: Evidence. One of them, a hefty man with deep-set eyes and trousers that swished together as he walked, walked up to the front door, wiped his feet on the welcome mat, and let himself into the house. It felt like a stranger’s hands riffling through her underwear drawer.

‘Hey,’ she screamed. ‘Hey!’

Another, rosy-cheeked, constable glanced over, then walked quickly towards the house. Abby marched through the rain. ‘Stop! You can’t go in there. What the hell do you think you’re—’

‘Ab,’ came a voice.

She turned to see Bobbi coming sheepishly towards her. Abby counted off the reasons she shouldn’t attack this woman where she stood, but she couldn’t hold onto a single one of them. She was existing in a single moment of hot rage, where reason and logic and the law were abstract, faraway objects.

‘What the fuck, Bobbi,’ she spat. ‘What the actual fuck!? You couldn’t give me a day. One fucking day.’

‘Wait.’

‘I guess you made your choice between Bobbi the Friend and Bobbi the Cop, you fucking—’ She almost said dyke and hated herself for it. The word seeped out from somewhere deep and vicious. ‘How could you do this to me, Bobbi?’