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‘You should have hit me back,' she wanted to say but knew that Keith would have been profoundly shocked by that.

‘He is . . . dis . . . dis . . .,' says the man, trying to indicate, Anna thinks, that the dog has spots of colour. ‘Is . . . is,' he continues and then looks around, and not finding what he's looking for, growls at the policewoman.

‘Like a leopard,' she says. Anna has no idea how the policewoman has understood what the man was trying to say.

‘Dat,' he says, pointing a finger at her.‘Like dat.' His accent sounds European but Anna doesn't know from which part. Keith, as he tells her all the time, always knows. He makes a habit of talking to strangers with accents, just so he can enjoy their incredulous expressions when he picks, say, the state they're from if he's talking to an American, or the county they're from if he's speaking to an Englishman.

‘Pity it's not the sort of thing you can make money from,' she always thinks as she smiles and congratulates him on
his accuracy. ‘Keith is easily impressed with himself,' she told Caro once when they were exchanging confidences about their husbands. ‘Most of them are,' Caro had said.

Anna smiles again as she remembers how Caro's laughter had set her off and the two of them had giggled like much younger women. There was a freedom in uncontrollable laughter, a feeling of being right in the moment, and Anna had not experienced such moments with anyone but Caro since she was a child.

The policewoman sighs and writes, in a small notebook, the dog's description. ‘Okay; we have everything we need. We'll call you if we find him.'

The man nods and smiles and his shoulders slump forward a little, as though he is relieved that the police are on the case. He shuffles out of the station and the policewoman turns her attention to Anna. Her hair is tightly slicked back into a short ponytail. She is wearing a vest covered in pockets and has a gun holstered at her side.

‘Do you really find lost dogs?' Anna asks.

‘No, not really,' she replies, giving Anna a small smile, ‘but he comes in every week to report it. I used to try and explain that it's not something the police do but he doesn't seem to understand, or want to understand, so it's easier just to take down the details and tell him we'll do our best.'

‘Doesn't he wonder why you never find him?'

‘We don't think the dog actually exists, but it makes him happier to report it missing.'

‘But surely you need to help him understand that?' Anna asks, finding herself aggrieved on behalf of the old man.

The policewoman seems to realise that she has unwittingly found herself in a conversation and stops smiling. ‘Can I help you?' she says.

‘Oh yes. I'm . . . um . . . I'm here to meet with Detective Anderson,' Anna replies and feels herself flush at the words. This is not a situation she has ever imagined she would find herself in.

The policewoman consults a computer on the counter.

‘You are?' she asks.

‘Anna McAllen.'

‘Yes, Anna McAllen,' says the policewoman, agreeing with Anna that she is, indeed, who she says she is.

‘No one else would want to be me,' thinks Anna.

‘Come this way, please.' The policewoman's tone is low and her voice formal. The change is alarmingly sudden, making Anna wonder what she's heard. She glances at the mirror again, wondering how many people are judging her.

She is no longer a nice woman seeking help. She is here to be interviewed, to help police with their enquiries. No one has said these words to her but she is thinking them. Whenever she's heard the phrase on the news, she's known instantly that while it sounds like a friendly exchange of information, it is anything but.

I'm here because they suspect me of something. I'm here because I am a suspect. I know that, she knows that. Everyone knows that.

‘It's just routine,' Detective Anderson had told her when he called yesterday. ‘It's just so we can get all the facts down.'

‘But you already have the facts,' she said. ‘You were there.'

‘I wasn't there when it happened, I was only at the hospital. Trust me, it's no big deal. We just have to do it in a formal situation so we can get your statement on camera. It can wait if you're not . . . ready.'

‘Why does it need to be on camera?'

‘Anna, I don't want you to get upset about this. It's more to do with how the case against the driver is going to proceed. We just need a clear statement from you. But, as I said, it can wait if you're not ready.'

‘No,' she had said. ‘I'll do it. I'll come in and do it.'

It was, for a moment, a relief to think that she could leave the house, that she
should
leave the house. Bereaved people were supposed to stay home, out of sight and away from people who were trying to get on with their lives. Last night, she had looked at the walls of the hallway leading to their bedroom and wondered if they were moving closer together. She's found herself standing in the garden at all hours, sucking in deep breaths of air to carry back inside with her.

Anna follows the policewoman through a door into the back of the station, which is really just a collection of small rooms. The air-conditioning seems to be failing in the face of the heat and she feels her lip bead with sweat. She reaches up to touch her cheek and finds it wet. Again, she has been crying without having realised. Anna had always
assumed that crying involves the whole body, starting with heaving shoulders and guttural sounds, but now she knows better. She can be standing in the kitchen, thinking about whether she would like a cup of tea, and absent-mindedly touch her face and find it wet. She is always embarrassed when this happens and is glad Keith hasn't caught her.

Even when she thinks she is coping, she is not. Anna wipes her face quickly.

She reaches into her bag and touches her phone but instantly withdraws her hand. She cannot call Caro now. She cannot call Caro ever again but, oh, how she wants to. More than anything, she wants to call Caro on her phone and say, ‘You won't believe this but . . .'

Detective Anderson is sitting in an office with the door open. He is reading something on a computer screen when the policewoman knocks on the door. ‘Detective Anderson, Anna McAllen is here for her interview,' she says.

‘Ah, Anna,' he says, standing up. ‘Good of you to come.'

Anna nods at him, maintaining the charade that she is doing him a favour. ‘Thanks, Missy,' he says to the policewoman, and she nods and leaves. He leans back a little and braces his hands against his back, and Anna is struck, as she was when she met him two weeks ago, at how tall and broad he is. He towers over her, and when Keith stood next to him, her husband looked like a boy in comparison.

‘Follow me; we'll pick up Cynthia along the way. Are you okay?'

Anna wipes her cheeks again and nods. ‘Just fine.'

Detective Anderson grimaces a little, in recognition of the outright lie.

She follows him down a corridor, waiting while he knocks quickly on a closed door and then moves off without saying anything. Behind her, she hears the door open and knows that Cynthia, whoever she is, is walking behind her now.

Once all three of them are seated in a small room with a table, three chairs and little else, Anna feels a shift in Detective Anderson's demeanour. He sets up a camera, and then sits down and looks at it.

‘It is eleven am and this is the West Hallston police station. Attending are Detective Sergeant Walter Anderson and Detective Sergeant Cynthia Moreno.

‘To begin with, Mrs McAllen, I want to make sure that you understand we are going to ask you some questions but you do not have to say or do anything that you don't want to. Do you understand that?'

‘Yes,' says Anna softly.

‘I also want to let you know that we will be recording this interview. Are you happy to let us record it?'

Anna looks at the camera, ‘What happens if I say no,' she asks.

‘Then we can use a tape recorder or we can type up our questions and your answers as we go,' says the detective.

‘No, no it's fine, you can record it.'

‘Okay, and one more thing, Mrs McAllen. I just want to let you know that you don't have to say anything but if,
for some reason, this ends up in court then there may be a problem if you bring up something that you have not mentioned in this interview. And anything you do say may be used as evidence in this case. Do you understand that?'

Anna nods.

‘Can you answer that verbally please Mrs McAllen.'

‘Yes, I understand that, and please call me Anna.'

‘And lastly,' continues Detective Anderson, as though he hasn't heard her, ‘you have the right to let a friend or relative know where you are and you have the right to talk to a lawyer.'

‘A lawyer?'

‘Yes—would you like to speak to a lawyer?'

‘Do I need to speak to a lawyer . . . I mean, I don't know; I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm just . . .' Anna feels a light sweat of humiliation break out all over her body as she scrabbles in her bag for her last remaining tissue.

‘Control yourself,' she thinks.

‘That's okay, Anna,' says Detective Anderson and is then silent, giving her time to finish blowing her nose.

Anna has never been one to cry in front of other people. She feels humiliated any time she does it. She has always thought of herself as being made of stronger stuff but is aware that tears are the expected reaction to what has happened, especially in front of the police, especially in front of family; otherwise, how will anyone know that she is grieving?

‘It's okay,' he says again, and Anna takes a deep breath and looks straight at him. In addition to his height, he has
thick black hair and green eyes. There is a light stubble on his chin, and Anna clutches her tissue tightly to prevent her hand from reaching out to touch him. ‘What kind of a person are you to be noticing his looks?' she thinks.

‘I just need to ask you these questions and I need to let you know again that this is being recorded,' he says. His tone has softened and Anna sees the man she met two weeks ago but, having had a glimpse of his professional demeanour, she reminds herself that she is in a police station and that anything she says, as he has just explained, may be used against her.

‘Words can be weapons,' her mother always told her.

‘Our local weapons expert,' was how Peter and Anna used to refer to her when they were teenagers, because no one was more devastatingly accurate than their mother.

‘Yes, yes, I can see that,' says Anna, gesturing to the camera. ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but can I get another tissue?' She is feeling flustered and wishes that Keith were sitting next to her.

‘Here you go, Anna,' says Detective Anderson, sliding a box of tissues across the table. ‘Just relax. I know this is a really difficult time. We can leave it for another week.'

‘She'll still be . . . be gone in a week, Detective. I just want to get this over with.' Anna tries to say the word ‘dead' every day but simply can't. She remembers that only a couple of weeks ago, she would, as most people do, say she was ‘dead tired,' or that she'd ‘rather be dead than wear a bikini again' or that ‘the stores were dead today'. Now, she cannot say
the word, but she thinks it all the time, repeating it in her head until it momentarily loses its meaning, making her think that she has conquered it, but then she opens her mouth to say it and cannot even get the first syllable out. ‘My daughter is d . . . My daughter is de . . . My daughter is . . .' she will stutter and then just give up.

‘I understand,' says Detective Anderson. ‘Why don't you take a few deep breaths? Cynthia and I have as much time as you need.'

She does take a few deep breaths, and uses the time to look at Cynthia—as he has called her. She is about the same height as Anna, with curly brown hair tied in a messy bun. Her breasts strain a little at the blouse she is wearing, drawing Anna's eyes to them. ‘She looks too young to be in here, too young to be a detective,' she thinks. There are no lines on her face, only a few freckles.
Pretty. Too pretty. Look how pretty my detectives are.

This morning, in the mirror, Anna had seen how the grey circles under her eyes have become more obvious because she is so pale and her face is so much thinner. Her skin is now dry and flaky. She cannot seem to moisturise it enough.

Detective Anderson clears his throat.

‘I can't seem to stop crying,' says Anna. She has no idea why she has said this because it is not strictly true. She has moments when she is not crying, moments when she is not even sad; moments when she feels nothing. But those moments are overwhelmed by all the other ones where she
finds herself in the grip of violent, debilitating emotion, and looking at Detective Anderson, she does feel as though he might understand such a thing.

‘I keep thinking that eventually I'll get it together or . . . I don't know . . . dehydrate or something, but that's not happening. Do you think I'll ever stop crying?'

Chapter Two

Caro is running late. Geoff offered to drop her off but she didn't even bother answering when he first made the suggestion. She didn't when he suggested it twice more either.

‘I don't think you should be driving,' he stage whispered to her in a final attempt to convince her to accept his offer of a ride.

‘Oh, fuck off, Geoff,' she said in reply while unloading the dishwasher this morning.

He had sighed because Lex was in the room and he never swore in front of her, and then he had taken his briefcase and Lex had taken her school bag and the two of them had slunk out of the kitchen, their heads bowed under what Caro assumed was the collective weight of their disappointment in her.

She had smashed a mug after they'd left. It was the last thing she had removed from the dishwasher, coinciding with the sound of the garage door closing, letting Caro know that she was now truly alone. She had watched, fascinated, as the mug exploded into shards. It had not been as cathartic as she'd thought it would be.