Did Sean take it? Is that what he was there for, not to wake me from a nightmare but to take the pills away? But why would he? Why would anyone not want me to sleep? I go to my half-open door and peer out. There are no lights on in any of the other rooms and the house is silent. But the hairs have risen up on my arms and they won’t go down.

When I wake again after an hour or two of broken sleep, the first thing I see is the wardrobe door open when it was definitely shut before. It creeps me out, the thought of someone in here going through my things when I was asleep. I get up and open the door wider. The camera—Bella’s camera—is gone. It has to be Sean who took it. I close my eyes and picture him leaning toward me, his skin against mine. I thought I wanted…I don’t know what I wanted. I thought I wanted Max, but when I close my eyes and think of him, all I see is him and Bella in the woods. Sean must have taken the camera to give it to the police, but I’ve already dropped the film off at the post office. No one-day service here, it’s been posted off and I have to wait five long days to find out what’s on Bella’s last photographs.

I massage my temples, trying to ease the throbbing headache that’s settled in like an unwelcome visitor. It’s been weeks now since I slept through the night. The world has taken on an edge both sharp and blurry, I have to be careful when I stand or turn because dizziness strikes. Voices seem too loud and I keep drifting, finding time has passed and I have no recollection of it. It’s not the weird missing hours I’ve experienced—these moments are smaller, more frequent; I step out of my room and then I’m in the kitchen, I’m in the shower, then back in my room dressed. It’s like someone is cutting moments out of my life, cutting out the in-between bits so everything is on fast-forward. But fast-forward to what? The nights, though, the nights without sleep pass more slowly than ever.

Jack is coming out of Julia’s room as I step onto the landing. It doesn’t make me happy to see that he’s finally talking to his mother. It makes the anxious knot in my stomach bigger, a knot that gnaws and nags and aches. I push past him and go into Julia’s room. She’s awake and I can see she’s been crying. He’s told her, I think. Told her about Greg and his twisted conviction that me or Dad or Bella had something to do with his death.