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Back What You Did Save as PDF
Chapters (44)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. Chapter Fourteen
  19. Chapter Fifteen
  20. Chapter Sixteen
  21. Chapter Seventeen
  22. Chapter Eighteen
  23. Chapter Nineteen
  24. Chapter Twenty
  25. Chapter Twenty-One
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six
  31. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  32. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  33. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  34. Chapter Thirty
  35. Chapter Thirty-One
  36. Chapter Thirty-Two
  37. Chapter Thirty-Three
  38. Chapter Thirty-Four
  39. Chapter Thirty-Five
  40. Chapter Thirty-Six
  41. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  44. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

‘Karen, I saw him stab Mike! Right in front of me! He’s still unconscious! And Cassie was there too, and she could have been hurt, she . . . I’m sorry this has happened, God knows I am. I wish none of it was true and we could just reset to Saturday morning. But we can’t. I can’t lie to the police. And if Jake gets out, he might try to hurt Mike again. He needs help, Karen. Let him get it.’

She just looked at me. I looked back. And I felt the years of our friendship, the foundations of it under me, crumble away to nothing. She spoke so quietly at first I could hardly hear her. ‘I did it for you.’

‘What?’

‘Martha. I helped you.’

I opened my mouth to say it wasn’t the same at all, that had nothing to do with this, and I realised I was echoing Mike.

‘That night, Ali – he was with me. But not the whole time.’

I stood up. ‘You need to go.’

Karen nodded. She stood too.

Bill was hovering in the kitchen, and Karen turned back to give me a look on her way out. I saw in a flash how it must appear to her. Him with the tea towel over his shoulder, the rumble of the dishwasher, the smell of pizza. Me in my dressing gown, naked and still soapy underneath. The domesticity of it all. As if Bill, the one who’d gone with her to the assault centre, the worst moment of her life, had chosen sides. Had chosen me. Karen said nothing as she left, but she didn’t need to. There were no words left.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

‘Will he wake up?’ Benji’s voice quavered as he watched his dad. Mike was grey and still, a terrible looseness in his face that told me he wasn’t simply asleep. Benji was in his school uniform, shirt creased with a smear of bright green marker on the collar. His face needed a scrub. Cassie, on the other hand, looked like she’d touched up her make-up before coming to the hospital. She hadn’t been back to school yet – she’d begged me to let her stay off, and I couldn’t find it in me to force her. Her face was like a doll’s, smooth with foundation, and her hair wafted hairspray as she moved. It was the next day. Time unspooling away from the night it happened, already Tuesday afternoon. I wanted to gather up these broken, fractured days, and run back and dump them in a heap, start again from Saturday. Not go to the meeting with Vix and Julie. Not let everyone get so drunk. Not go to bed when I did.