“He’s fine, don’t worry. I left a note to tell him you’re with me,” Max says.

For a moment, I’m reassured by the soothing tone in his voice. It reminds me of the Max I fell in love with when I was fourteen, who always used to notice me and take the time to talk to me. I thought we had something so special, right up until the wedding. I thought we were destined to be together, the great happy-ever-after. Didn’t I tell Greg all about it? Didn’t I make him laugh, planning to use his garden for our wedding one day? Didn’t he smile and pat my hand and tell me I could grow my own wedding bouquet? Silly, fanciful dreams that bloomed and grew right alongside the roses. I stopped watering those dreams after the wedding, after Bella died. I let them die too.

How silly. Bella was telling me all along. Wake up, she kept saying, but I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to, not if this is what I’m waking up to.

“Why am I here?”

Max sighs. “It could have all been fine. Even after Jack and Sean sold the house and the land surrounding it and they found the body. There was no evidence, no proof any of us were involved. You didn’t even remember what you’d done. We worked so hard sowing the seeds about Greg and those murdered girls, to widen the circle of people who could have killed him. You kept muttering about remembering things, but you were easy to distract—the shoes, the texts. But it meant you were behaving so oddly, they couldn’t help but look at you with suspicion. Even then, though, there was no evidence against you. We all would have been fine. Then, before they dug up the body, Sean let slip, oh so casually, that you had the camera. He had no idea how freaked out me and Lena were.”

Bella’s camera, hidden in Dean House the whole time.

“I looked for it at your dad’s house and at your flat. I looked everywhere. I thought…if I found it before you developed the film, I could stop all this.”

I remember the things out of place in my flat after Max stayed. I remember the awkward sex and it stings as I realize it was more than a mistake, it was—what? Distraction? A way to get into my home, nothing more. Oh, how very silly I was.

“It was you, wasn’t it? On the camera?”

“We were all there. With you.”

No. Not right. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t.

“Bella went nuts as soon as Greg appeared. Lena was holding her back. She went berserk, she was screaming at him. Greg launched himself at her and I thought he was going to hit her…”