“Until they know?”

“It’s not Abdic’s child,” he says.

“They’ve done DNA testing?”

He shakes his head. “No, I just know. I can’t say how, but I know. The baby is—was—mine.”

“If he thought it was his baby, it gives him a motive, doesn’t it?” He wouldn’t be the first man to get rid of an unwanted child by getting rid of its mother—although I don’t say that out loud. And—I don’t say this, either—it gives Scott a motive, too. If he thought his wife was pregnant with another man’s child . . . only he can’t have done. His shock, his distress—it has to be real. No one is that good an actor.

Scott doesn’t appear to be listening any longer. His eyes, fixed on the back of the bedroom door, are glazed over, and he seems to be sinking into the bed as though into quicksand.

“You should stay here a while,” I say to him. “Try to sleep.”

He looks at me then, and he almost smiles. “You don’t mind?” he asks. “It would be . . . I would be grateful. I find it hard to sleep at home. It’s not just the people outside, the sense of people trying to get to me. It’s not just that. It’s her. She’s everywhere, I can’t stop seeing her. I go down the stairs and I don’t look, I force myself not to look, but when I’m past the window, I have to go back and check that she’s not out there, on the terrace.” I can feel the tears pricking my eyes as he tells me. “She liked to sit out there, you see—on this little terrace we’ve got. She liked to sit out there and watch the trains.”

“I know,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “I used to see her there sometimes.”

“I keep hearing her voice,” he says. “I keep hearing her calling me. I lie in bed and I can hear her calling me from outside. I keep thinking she’s out there.” He’s trembling.

“Lie down,” I say, taking the mug from his hand. “Rest.”

When I’m sure that he’s fallen asleep, I lie down at his back, my face inches from his shoulder blade. I close my eyes and listen to my heart beating, the throb of blood in my neck. I inhale the sad, stale scent of him.

When I wake, hours later, he’s gone.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2013

MORNING

I feel treacherous. He left me just hours ago, and here I am, on my way to see Kamal, to meet once again the man he believes killed his wife. His child. I feel sick. I wonder whether I should have told him my plan, explained that I’m doing all this for him. Only I’m not sure that I am doing it just for him, and I don’t really have a plan.

I will give something of myself. That’s my plan for today. I will talk about something real. I will talk about wanting a child. I’ll see whether that provokes something—an unnatural response, any kind of reaction. I’ll see where that gets me.

It gets me nowhere.

He starts out by asking me how I’m feeling, when I last had a drink.

“Sunday,” I tell him.

“Good. That’s good.” He folds his hands in his lap. “You look well.” He smiles, and I don’t see the killer. I’m wondering now what I saw the other day. Did I imagine it?

“You asked me, last time, about how the drinking started.” He nods. “I became depressed,” I say. “We were trying . . . I was trying to get pregnant. I couldn’t, and I became depressed. That’s when it started.”

In no time at all, I find myself crying again. It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness. I confide in him and I forget, once again, what I’m doing here. I don’t watch his face for a reaction, I don’t study his eyes for some sign of guilt or suspicion. I let him comfort me.

He is kind, rational. He talks about coping strategies, he reminds me that youth is on my side.

So maybe it doesn’t get me nowhere, because I leave Kamal Abdic’s office feeling lighter, more hopeful. He has helped me. I sit on the train and I try to conjure up the killer I saw, but I can’t see him any longer. I am struggling to see him as a man capable of beating a woman, of crushing her skull.

A terrible, shameful image comes to me: Kamal with his delicate hands, his reassuring manner, his sibilant speech, contrasted with Scott, huge and powerful, wild, desperate. I have to remind myself that this is Scott now, not as he was. I have to keep reminding myself of what he was before all this. And then I have to admit that I don’t know what Scott was before all this.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2013

EVENING

The train stops at the signal. I take a sip from the cold can of gin and tonic and look up at his house, her terrace. I was doing so well, but I need this. Dutch courage. I’m on my way to see Scott, and I’ll have to run all the risks of Blenheim Road before I do: Tom, Anna, police, press. The underpass, with its half memories of terror and blood. But he asked me to come, and I couldn’t refuse him.

They found the little girl last night. What was left of her. Buried in the grounds of a farmhouse near the East Anglian coast, just where someone had told them to look. It was in the papers this morning:

Police have opened an investigation into the death of a child after they found human remains buried in the garden of a house near Holkham, north Norfolk. The discovery came after police were tipped off about a possible unlawful killing during the course of their investigation into the death of Megan Hipwell, from Witney, whose body was found in Corly Woods last week.

I phoned Scott this morning when I saw the news. He didn’t answer, so I left a message, telling him I was sorry. He called back this afternoon.

“Are you all right?” I asked him.

“Not really.” His voice was thick with drink.

“I’m so sorry . . . do you need anything?”

“I need someone who isn’t going to say ‘I told you so.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“My mother’s been here all afternoon. She knew all along, apparently—‘something not right about that girl, something off, no family, no friends, came from nowhere.’ Wonder why she never told me.” The sound of glass breaking, swearing.

“Are you all right?” I said again.

“Can you come here?” he asked.

“To the house?”

“Yes.

“I . . . the police, journalists . . . I’m not sure . . .”

“Please. I just want some company. Someone who knew Megs, who liked her. Someone who doesn’t believe all this . . .”

He was drunk and I knew it and I said yes anyway.

Now, sitting on the train, I’m drinking, too, and I’m thinking about what he said. Someone who knew Megs, who liked her. I didn’t know her, and I’m not sure that I like her anymore. I finish my drink as quickly as I can and open another one.

I get off at Witney. I’m part of the Friday-evening commuter throng, just another wage slave amongst the hot, tired masses, looking forward to getting home and sitting outside with a cold beer, dinner with the kids, an early night. It might just be the gin, but it feels indescribably good to be swept along with the crowd, everyone phone-checking, fishing in pockets for rail passes. I’m taken back, way back to the first summer we lived on Blenheim Road, when I used to rush home from work every night, desperate to get down the steps and out of the station, half running down the street. Tom would be working from home and I’d barely be through the door before he was taking my clothes off. I find myself smiling about it even now, the anticipation of it: heat rising to my cheeks as I skipped down the road, biting my lip to stop myself from grinning, my breath quickening, thinking of him and knowing he’d be counting the minutes until I got home, too.