Dad’s already gone to the police station when I get downstairs the next morning. Sean is in the kitchen, a cold cup of coffee next to him. I don’t have time for breakfast and I’m not hungry anyway. I hug my bag close to me. Sean and Jack were both around last night—it could have been either of them over at Dean House, leaving the shoes for me to find.

“It’s already in the papers,” Sean says as I turn to leave.

“What?”

“Just the local paper, a snippet, talking about the ‘find’ at Dean House, speculating about the police presence. It mentions the other deaths, the unsolved killings of those two girls and the rumors from back then.”

My hand convulses on the door handle, knuckles white.

“It’s all going to come back, isn’t it? Everything that happened that summer? This is just the start.” There’s a heaviness in his voice, a dread echoed in me.

The local paper is still in the hall, open on the table where Sean must have read it. I pick it up with shaking hands. Sean is right. As soon as the news is released that it’s his father’s body, there’s going to be more than bones dug up in the coming weeks.

I wanted that ten years ago. God—I wanted that when Bella appeared in my flat. I wanted the police to see Bella as a victim, not a silly girl who got drunk and fell to her death. But now? The thought of the police back here, squirreling their way back into our lives while Julia dies upstairs, the thought of all the questions they’ll be asking Dad right now. The thought terrifies me.

Bella is at the back of my mind, whispering the start of the story again: Once upon a time, two girls went into the woods…

I drift off on the bus. I’m on my way to the police station, Bella’s shoes in my bag, and as the rocking of the bus sends me into that weird netherworld of half asleep, half awake, I see Bella is sitting next to me on the bus. I’ve tuned in halfway through a conversation. All Bella, me silent next to her.

Is this a dream or a memory?

“I never thought it would be him,” she says. “Never, ever.” She turns to look at me, all glowing eyes and pink cheeks. She’s wearing a dress. Bella never wore dresses. She looks radiant. “We talked, after you stormed off. I understand now. I understand why he took us there.”