There it is. In a nutshell.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I say.

In my hotel room, I unpack my overnight bag, change into my pyjamas and sit on the edge of the bed.

Only then do I allow myself to examine the notebook I’d retrieved from the bedroom of my childhood home.

It’s been twenty-one years since I’ve seen it. Twenty-one years since Shannon Carter pressed it upon me during that confusing, bloodstained night. Be careful, Brin. Put it in a place no one will find it.

And no one did. The journal is bound in cheap gold-coloured cloth. A peeling strawberry sticker clings to the outside, tacky with old glue. Clumps of dust line the papery groove that runs between its fabric covers. On the back is a smudged handprint, a rusty stain. Stored in a cool, dry room and out of direct sunlight, time has hardly left its mark.

This is evidence. I broke the law. Perverted the course of justice. Lied and lied again. Even though I was twelve, I understood what I was doing was wrong. That knowledge has haunted me ever since, casting its long shadow across my life.

In the quiet of the hotel room, there’s a rising fug of mustiness and something oddly sweet. I lift the notebook to my nose and catch the faintest strawberry scent from the sticker. Even after all these years, its perfume has endured.

I open it.

And I’m back there, back to being a girl on the brink of adolescence. Back to scribbling song lyrics and secret messages and love notes to boys we mooned over but never spoke to. Back to witnessing things no twelve-year-old should.

Scrawled inside the cover in untidy handwriting are these words: This book belongs to S. Carter. Through the corridor of years, the past reaches out and touches me.

I turn to the first page.

It’s a child’s pencil drawing, surprisingly accomplished. The graphite has smudged, but the knife still curves. Its blade, shaded into steel, is crowned with drops of blood, coloured in with red felt-tip pen. A single line is written beneath it.

Tonight I’m going to kill my mother and father.

16

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

On his penultimate day in government, Geoffrey Heathcote ate two boiled eggs and a kipper, more of a Last Breakfast than a Last Supper.

He wore his favourite tie – blue with yellow spots – and kissed his wife on the cheek. She was peering through a slat in the shutters of their multi-million-pound Mayfair residence. ‘They’re still out there.’

‘It’s tomorrow’s fish and chip paper,’ he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘It will all be forgotten by next week.’