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It seems unreal that people can still sleep. They don’t seem to realise that this is it. The last day. That after this day I will be free.

I pull the duffel bag towards me, ease the zip down. It screams, louder than any zip ever should, and again I look. But still there is no one. I am all alone, and that should come as no surprise to me. When have I ever been anything else?

I ease the gun free. I know that it is loaded. I remember loading it. But now, at the eleventh hour, the urge to check is overwhelming. But there they are, the round bullets. Just waiting. I pull a box of ammunition free, slip it into my pocket. I know that will be enough. I’m a good shot.

I reach up and tug at the boot. Can hear my heart thumping.

Stick to the plan. Just stick to the plan.

Ease the boot down slowly, wincing as it squeals. There is a smell hanging in the air, one that I have come to associate with this house, the scent of rotting food, dirty nappies, the filth that spills from the overstuffed bins. The council don’t collect them like they should. The bins have stood out for too long in the heat, are poisoning the air. I’m not surprised. This place is already hell, what difference does a few more shitty nappies make? I turn, lift the gun and begin to walk softly along the garden path.

I look up at the house. Most of the curtains are closed, thin cotton affairs that barely cover the fingerprint-smudged windows. But there is one window that remains uncovered. Dylan’s room. What would be the point of closing the curtains? He doesn’t sleep there any more. A bike lies on the front step. One of the children too tired from play to bother putting it away, Carla too caught up in her nearly dead son, the hanging fragments of her disappointing life. An empty paddling pool lying slack-jawed on the meagre front lawn.

I suck in a breath. Heft the gun.

Stick to the plan.

The front door is closed, locked, but that won’t present a challenge to me. I see it like it has already happened, slipping in through the door, up the stairs to where they are all asleep. Raising the gun, resting my index finger on the trigger. Bam. Bam. Bam. There will be blood, but, when you get right down to it, it will be a mercy for them. I glance back over my shoulder at the glory that is Harddymaes. Life should be more than this. So I will pull the trigger, again and again, and then, eventually, it will be over and we will all be on the road to peace. I suddenly realise how very tired I am, how badly I want this day – all days – to be done.

‘Wha’s dat?’

My heart screams, makes to leap out of my chest, and I spin, almost shoot blindly at the sound. It is a child, little more than three, standing on the doorstep of the house next door. Behind him there is the sound of voices, television English. He looks at me, studying, naked but for a nappy that hangs down to his fat knees. There is chocolate ringing his mouth, a slick of jam that has been wiped through his blond hair, leaving it standing erect.

I am frozen. My mouth moves uselessly.

‘Dat. Wha’s dat?’

I look at him, look down to where he is pointing at the gun, now held limp in my fingers. My heart thumping.

‘A walking stick.’

There is a plan. Stick to the plan. He stares at me, considering, and I find myself praying that this little wisp of a person will accept my explanation and leave me the fuck alone.

‘Why?’

I frown, pull my face into an expression that I think should be menacing to a toddler. ‘You should go inside.’

The kid stares at me, chews his thumbnail. Unimpressed. ‘Mammy’s in da shower.’

‘Go inside,’ I snap, shout at him, pulling myself up to my full height. Expect his face to crumple, lip to shake. But he just keeps staring at me. A child used to being shouted at.

‘Want to play?’ he asks, hopeful.

I stand there. Gun in my hands. There is a plan and I want to stick to the plan, but now my heart is thumping and my hands are shaking, and the absurdity of this is just beginning to settle on me.

I stare at him. Watch the bubble of snot that hangs from his left nostril.

I just want it to end.

I turn, walk away.

‘
THE THING IS,
I just . . . I don’t understand. That’s the thing, isn’t it, Jeff?’ Emily’s mother turns, looking vaguely at her husband, like she has forgotten where this sentence is going, is looking for him to guide her. ‘We don’t understand what she was doing there. I mean, walking on the M4. Why would she?’ She gives a little nod, proud that she figured it out after all – made it to the end of her thought on her own. Then you see it, the silence bringing with it the recollection of where she is, what has come to pass, and two tears, thick and fat, begin to glide down her concave cheeks.

I’ve never been good with tears. Not mine. Not anybody else’s. It’s the wrenching, raw honesty of them that throws me. The courage to allow your pain to get out, it unnerves me, I suppose. I never quite know what to do, if there is some magic word that I can say that will make things better, or if I should be all British and discreetly look away, affording the crier a privacy they never asked for, and, quite possibly, never wanted.

It’s the coward’s way out.

Seems that Emily’s mother knows this, can somehow sense that all I want to do is run like hell. She is squeezing my fingers, so tight that it hurts. I pat her hand with my free one – a feeble attempt – and manage to hold back the ‘There, there’ that’s just waiting to slip out. Mrs Wilson is dressed, but just barely: a skirt that comes down to her ankles, a sweatshirt stained at the cuff. Looks like she has pulled on the first thing that came to hand. A small gold cross hanging at her neck, catching the light. I study it, so that I don’t have to look at her face: slack, the grief washing away all of the muscle tone. Alexandra Wilson has aged in the years since I saw her last, a whooshing slump into seniority. The hair that was blonde is now pure white, laughter lines all but vanished into the deeper crevasses of premature old age.

‘It’s good that you came.’ Alexandra squeezes my hand. A little nod to herself. ‘It’s good.’

Guilt rolls across my stomach. ‘It’s been a long time, since I’ve seen Emily.’ I hold it out to her, as if it’s an apology.

Alexandra nods. Gives a heavy, wintery sigh. ‘That’s how life is. People drift apart.’ Squeezes my hand again. ‘I’m glad that you came, Charlotte dear. It’s so very good of you.’

It took me for ever to open the car door when I arrived in the Wilsons’ road. I sat, my knees pulled up so that they almost touched my chin, and stared out into the street where I grew up. You couldn’t see the sea, not today, the trees a dense curtain of leaves. I parked at the top of the road. Could see the Wilson house, its whitewashed walls, its hanging baskets, pink and orange and yellow. The curtains had been pulled across the front windows as if the entire house had its eyes closed, signalling the presence of death. I tried to focus on the hanging baskets, on the colours. Tried not to look beyond it. It lies four doors down, the house where I grew up. I haven’t been here since we moved, fourteen years ago. It looks different than I remembered. Someone has built a porch on the outside, changed the windows. I try not to think about the family that must live there now, try not to wonder if they are happy.

‘It’s just . . . I wish I could understand, you know? What on earth she was doing there. I mean, she wasn’t driving – not that night. Her car was in the garage, wasn’t it, Jeff?’

Emily’s father nods, a slow, vacant movement; isn’t looking at his wife, but is staring into space, his hands moving, like in his mind he is washing them, as if the motion itself can cleanse him of what has happened. He sits in an armchair. It’s his chair, you can see that. The way it moulds itself around him, the remote controls lined up along the arm, a newspaper folded, tucked down the side. Then he takes a deep breath, steeling himself, and glances up at his wife, a fresh spasm of pain blossoming across his face, looks back down, and it’s like he has got smaller suddenly, as if he has folded inwards. I can’t help wondering what will happen to them. How their respective wounds will fit together. Will the scabs form across them both, pulling them tighter? Or will they grow jagged, their scars not matching, so that they no longer seem to fit?

‘That’s right, wasn’t it, Jeff? She’d been having problems, see, with her – you know – the watchamacallit.’

‘Power steering.’ Jeff’s voice is low, gruff.

‘The power steering. Jeff said he’d run her, if she wanted to go anywhere. She promised she’d call. But she never did, did she, Jeff?’ Alexandra looks down, her fingers plucking at mine. Shakes her head. ‘Never did call.’

I saw Emily this morning, loading a toddler into a Citroën Picasso. I saw her last night, waiting in a queue in front of me at the Chinese, picking up an order of chicken chow mein. I saw her on my way out of my flat, when I stopped to glance in the mirror, and saw hair wild with teenage frizz, teeth misshapen with braces. Drew in a sharp breath. Glanced across my shoulder. But, of course, she wasn’t there. It shouldn’t have surprised me – that now it seemed that Emily was all I could see. Although, in truth, I couldn’t say that I had thought of her more than once, twice, in the years that had intervened. It was, I suppose, a deliberate forgetting. But then I suppose that is what death does. It makes the forgotten unforgettable.

‘So, the thing is, that’s what I just don’t understand. I mean, where she was . . .’ Alexandra looks down, her voice failing. ‘She had no car. And it’s such a long way from her house. It just . . . it doesn’t make sense to me.’

‘Did you see her that day?’

Alexandra nods slowly, a hesitation to the movement. ‘Yes. We were . . . it was the church, you see, we were having a fete, a fundraiser – she came there, to the church, to see me. Said that she would help. But she was, I don’t know, quiet, almost like she wasn’t really there, you know?’

‘Did you ask her why?’ I ask.

Alexandra looks down, biting her lip, and when her voice comes it is rough-edged and worn. ‘I was going to. I could see that she wasn’t right, that something was just off. You see, Emily and me, we’re very close, and she tells me everything, so of course I was going to ask her about it. But then . . .’ Her voice shakes, ‘I was busy. It’s not much of an excuse, is it? For a mother not to talk to her daughter? But that was all it was – I was too busy to pay attention. I made myself feel better by saying that she was okay really, just a bit quiet, and everyone gets days like that, don’t they? And Emily, she’s such a one for putting a brave face on things, always managing to muster a smile. I told myself that she was tired, it was just that. She didn’t stay too long. She told me that she was going out, was meeting a friend in town. She didn’t say who, though, and I . . .’ her voice shrinks until it is barely there, ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Probably someone from work.’ Jeff’s voice is so quiet, it would be easy to miss it. Looks up at me. ‘She’s very popular at work.’

‘She’s a nurse.’ Alexandra raises her chin. ‘Did you know? In Mount Pleasant Hospital. She’s very good. Very, very popular.’

I glance across at the mantelpiece, at the pictures of Emily. A pudgy baby. A teenager, blonde curls sitting on her shoulders. A woman in her nurse’s uniform, a gold cross just visible at her neck. ‘You must be very proud of her.’

‘Very proud.’ Alexandra isn’t looking at me, is talking over my shoulder to her daughter on the mantelpiece.

I had sat in the car, in the street where I used to live. Had watched as seagulls swirled overhead. Had called Aden.

‘Hey. It’s Charlie.’ In case he didn’t know. Which, in fairness, was reasonable. I mean, we rarely talked on the phone.

‘Hey.’ Aden had sounded surprised. Pleased. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m okay. Look, I wanted to give you a heads-up. Steve Lowe came by the office today.’ There was silence on the line, seemed like I could hear his head sinking into his hands. ‘Steve Lowe, he’s . . . he’s not happy, with the IPCC findings. He’s . . . they’re filing a civil suit.’

I wondered if he was holding his breath.

Then a soft sigh. ‘Yeah, the training sergeant told me. Just when you think it’s over, eh?’

My stomach writhed. I could see Aden sitting on the kerb, head in his hands, in the pouring rain. The darkness cut with blue lights. Wanted to reach down, hold his hands, but I knew that wasn’t appropriate, so I didn’t. Just held the umbrella above him. A paltry offering. ‘It won’t be you. They won’t be coming after you, Ade.’

‘No. I know you’re right. I’m lucky, I guess.’ A little laugh that he didn’t mean. ‘Look, thanks for calling, Charlie. I really appreciate you wanting to let me know.’

‘You know people are saying she must have been drunk?’ Alexandra isn’t looking at me. Still staring at Emily in the silver frame, the nurse’s uniform, Emily’s face twisted into an awkward smile, like the last thing she wants is a camera pointed at her. ‘They don’t say it to my face – not when they think I can hear them – but I hear them talking. They say that she must have got drunk, wandered onto the motorway.’ She looks back at me, pleading. ‘It’s not true. It can’t be.’

‘Did Emily ever drink?’

‘Not a fan of the stuff,’ offered Jeff.

‘I mean, she wasn’t teetotal or anything,’ added Alexandra, ‘and I’m sure she did occasionally have a drink, but she wouldn’t have got drunk. She’s just not that kind of girl.’

‘I see.’ I find myself thinking that parents so rarely know all there is to know about their children.

‘She was a Christian. We all are.’ Alexandra Wilson releases her grip on my hand, turning the cross over in her fingers, her movements distant, unconscious. ‘Our faith, it’s very important to us. And there was another thing.’ She sits up a little, the thought bringing her to life again. ‘Her necklace. They never found it.’

‘Her . . .’

‘Her necklace. She had a gold chain with the word “Emily” on it. We bought it for her when she turned twenty-one. But when . . . when they found her, she wasn’t wearing it.’ Alexandra leans closer to me, voice confidential. ‘She always wore that necklace. I don’t understand where it went.’