Emptying the bag onto the table, Charlie saw that she’d been nearly right but not quite. Not books, but two white thin-spined notebooks. Lined paper. On the cover of one, in blue pen that had driven grooves into the thin cover, “The Lies” was written in childish handwriting. On the other, someone had simply written, “LIES,” in capital letters.

Charlie opened the first and started to flick through. “‘Pretended to be doing fun run for charity, got Mum and Dad to sponsor,’” she read aloud. “‘Promised never to go on Danny McKillop’s motorbike, went on it today without a helmet.’ What are these?”

“Pages and pages of lies,” said Melissa. “Two notebooks’ full. I found them at Nicki’s parents’ house when Lee and I were there over the weekend. I . . . This is going to sound terrible, but I searched Nicki’s old bedroom while I was there. Lee and his mum and dad went out for a walk, and . . . well, I’ve been so worried about this Damon Blundy thing—the thought that Nicki might actually have . . .” Melissa closed her eyes for a few seconds. “I knew Quentin and Nora still had a lot of her old stuff, so I thought I’d have a look at it. Not to find anything directly connected to Damon Blundy’s death, obviously—Nicki didn’t know Damon Blundy when she was a child . . .”

“Then why?” Charlie asked. “What were you hoping to find?”

“I don’t know,” Melissa whispered tearfully. “Something that would help me understand Nicki better, maybe. Her psychology, why she lies. When she was a teenager, her parents nearly had her committed. Lee won’t talk about it much, but apparently they got as far as actually taking her to the place, the asylum, but at the last minute they just couldn’t do it.”

“Committed?” For lying to her parents when she was a teenager? Everyone did that.

Melissa nodded.

“So . . . you found these notebooks?” Charlie started to flick through the pages again. It was a record of lies told—an archive of lies, each one in a separate box, with a straight blue-ink line above and below it, each one accompanied by the date, and a number that bore no relation to the date. “In which Nicki listed all the lies she told her parents. How odd. Why would anyone do that? And what are these numbers, after the lies—150, 250, 300—what do they mean?”

Melissa said nothing. She looked shifty.

“Please, Melissa, if you know what any of it means or why Nicki did this, you’ve got to tell me. What you’re thinking right now could be right: if she’s crazy enough to collect her lies in notebooks and keep them, she might be crazy enough to—”

“No. That’s not . . .” Melissa looked desperate. “It’s not Nicki’s handwriting,” she said. “It’s Lee’s.”

“Lee? Her brother?”

“And my husband, yes.”