Now, alone and bored and confused, Benji mooched into the garden. Maybe he could be the one to find the jumper Mum mentioned, and maybe that would help Dad. Though he didn’t understand how. He’d seen the police crawling over the garden early that morning, in white suits like on TV. But maybe they didn’t know all the places to look. It was so big in the new house’s garden there were still even corners he didn’t know, dark and overgrown. He poked around, looking under bushes and in the hedge. Nothing, though he did find a bird’s nest with a clutch of blue eggs. He wished Dad was here to show.

The shed was locked up as always – only the gardener, Andrej, Benji’s hero, ever went in there. Behind it was a pile of leaves and branches and grass and things. Usually Andrej made a big heap and burned them, but he hadn’t come the week before. Benji saw something in among the greens and browns – a flash of red. He looked around – he wasn’t meant to go behind there, he knew that – but there was no one to tell him not to, that it might be dirty or dangerous. No adults at all. He bent and pulled at it, and it came out, knocking over twigs and rubbish. It was Dad’s jumper. How did it end up in the rubbish pile, all covered in bits of leaves and dirt? Benji hesitated. He remembered seeing a TV programme about detectives, where it said you shouldn’t move evidence. He crawled back out, and went inside, up the stairs to Cassie’s room. He’d left leaves and mud on the stairs, and Mum would be cross. He knocked. ‘Cassie?’

She didn’t answer for a while, and when she did her voice sounded like she had a cold. ‘What?’

‘You know Mum said to look for Dad’s jumper?’

He heard her footsteps, then she pulled the door open. Her face was red and swollen. ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ she said. ‘If they find it, they’ll use it to make Dad seem guilty.’

‘They will?’

‘Think about it. They’ll say he hid it somewhere, even if he just, like, lost it.’

Benji didn’t think the jumper could have got in the pile by mistake. After Cassie shut the door in his face, he went back across the garden and stared at it, beneath the twigs and branches and leaves waiting to be burned. Andrej came on Mondays, usually. That meant he would find it the next day. Was Cassie right – would Dad get in more trouble if it was hidden?

He wished there was someone to tell him what to do.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Bitch

What a fucking hypocrite

Calls herself a feminist, don’t see her commenting on her husband being a rapist