I waited near the school until he came out. He was hard to miss – already over six foot at sixteen, broad-shouldered as a grown man, and the shine of his fair hair in the sun. My hands gripped on the steering wheel. Aaron. The other person who’d been at the house that night, who I hadn’t even thought about. I couldn’t believe I was even considering this – that it could have been Aaron who wandered into the garden, somehow getting there ahead of Cassie, and attacked Karen with no one else seeing him. Surely he was too tall, too broad to be mistaken for Mike. Maybe I was going mad. All the same, everything else about this was mad too. I thought about going to DC Devine, yet again, telling him there was another possible suspect. Even though my current position was that Mike had admitted he’d done it, confessed to me on the night it happened. DC Devine would think I was a lunatic. I thought about it all for a long time, so long the kids had all gone home, and the school gate was deserted. I started the engine, and swung the steering wheel around, away from the school. The sun was in my eyes, and for a moment I was almost blinded.

I drove to the police station, finding parking in one of the expensive bays outside. It was one of those annoying machines that you have to text payment to, so I fiddled about with that for a while, growing more and more impatient. Then I dashed inside, and asked to see DC Devine.

Back in that same room again, the one with the chipped table. Him and me staring at each other. I thought how this man had brought me so much of the worst news of my life, how even if this was all resolved somehow, I would never forget him. But for him I was probably just another member of the public, an annoying one who kept pestering him for updates, changing my story. A woman who’d choose a man over her hurt, abused best friend. He wrote down what I had to say about Aaron being near the house that night, but I could tell he was just humouring me. ‘Don’t you think it’s worth looking into?’

‘Mrs Morris. Are you suggesting this lad, Aaron, he might have attacked Ms Rampling?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

He put down his pen and looked at me. His eyes were tired. ‘Mrs Morris. In cases like this, there’s often not a lot of evidence. It makes it hard to convict. But this time – we have Ms Rampling’s injuries. Your friend, Mr Anwar, he saw them on the lawn together. And we’ve had the DNA results back now. The semen – it was from your husband.’