A message flashes up on the computer screen, in a box, then disappears before I can read it properly. “Request to the server,” I think it said, or something like that.

I look over my shoulder, my heart thumping, half expecting to see the man with streaked hair. Mercifully, he’s not here. No one is watching me.

No one’s watching you in this room. What if someone’s using your computer to watch you?

“Request to the server”—what could it mean? Nothing like that’s ever happened before. Has Adam hacked into my Yahoo account? Has anyone?

“No, not published books,” Melissa says. “Two notebooks. Lee’s handwriting. They were with your things, in—”

“No. Shut up.” Melissa’s words have dragged me from my state of paranoid dread to an even worse horror. “I don’t want to talk about those notebooks.” I can’t bear to remember. I haven’t thought about those notebooks for years.

I feel as if I might throw up.

“Nicki, I’m worried. Why—”

“I’m not discussing those . . . things. If you say another word about them, I’ll hang up.”

“All right!” Melissa sounds as panicky as I feel. Is she crying? “Nicki, why didn’t you tell me the lunatic asylum story ever? Why did I hear it first from Lee? We were best friends, and you bitched about your parents all the time.”

“I had a strange premonition you’d one day ask not to be confided in,” I say in a brittle voice.

“Lee told me it was horrible for him, but . . . well, it must have been pretty horrible for you too. I can understand why you might not have wanted to talk about it.”

Interesting. For the first time since getting involved with my brother, Melissa cares about how I feel.

Because she’s seen the notebooks. And she’s wondering . . .

It’s too late. I’ve wanted to talk to her, about everything, for so long, but not anymore. I can’t.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I say, and hang up before she can answer.

On the computer, I open a new tab and go to my Hushmail account. I’ve still got all the emails I sent to King Edward, and his to me. He’s the only person who knows the lunatic asylum story, the only person I’ve ever felt able to tell—because of the distance between us, probably, and the degree of anonymity. Even then, I sent it to him as a story, and told it through Lee’s eyes, making sure I wasn’t the emotional focus of the story.

Feeling things is too hard. I’d rather be a body without sensations, without consciousness. Living, dead—who cares?

Stop it, Nicki. Be strong. You have a husband and two children downstairs who need you. And—