‘I don’t use digital for this. We were both shooting dozens of rolls of film, day after day. This one was taken…’ Owen paused for thought ‘… between something like the beginning of May and a week or two ago.’

‘That’s not good enough. Would…’ I hesitated and pretended to search for the name of the woman I’d seen in his photographs ‘… Andrea remember more precisely?’

‘I doubt it.’ He crossed to the window and stared out. ‘You say exactly the same?’

‘Pretty much.’

He picked up the photograph, looked at it, then said, ‘I guess I have to take this to the police, don’t I?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m going out now,’ he said. ‘I might be some time.’

‘Owen?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Who else has seen these, apart from me?’

‘Nobody. Not even my agent. Not even Andrea. They’ve been here in the folders.’

‘I guess it could be a coincidence,’ I said doubtfully.

‘Maybe it’s just the way men see women,’ said Owen. ‘That’s what you think, anyway, isn’t it?’

I frowned at him. ‘Do you think this is funny?’

‘No, I don’t. Why do you think I’m leaving?’ He gestured towards his overflowing suitcase. ‘You should leave too.’

‘You think so?’

‘There’s a curse on this house.’

I shivered. ‘Sometimes I’m so scared I can’t breathe,’ I said. ‘And sometimes it doesn’t seem real and I tell myself that soon I’ll wake up and none of it will have happened.’

‘So who can you trust? Astrid, who do you trust?’

I stared at him for a moment and he stared back. Something about him seemed different, darker than I’d known. ‘Terrible coincidences happen, don’t they?’ I said.

Owen took a step towards me and scrutinized me. It was as if he was trying to see something that even I didn’t know was there. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘But…’

‘About Pippa.’

‘Things like that don’t mean anything to Pippa,’ I said. ‘But they do to me, and I thought…’ I stopped and turned away from his burning gaze.

‘You thought they did to me too?’

‘I guess.’

‘If you need to know,’ he said, ‘it was before anything happened between us. I wanted you to know that. It’s important to me.’

‘I knew that,’ I said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Right, I’m off to the police with this. Why don’t you start packing?’

Chapter Twenty-two

‘Don’t you get it yet, Mel? They think it’s one of us.’

I stood outside the kitchen, my hand lifted half-way to the door, listening to his words. The fear that was always inside me seemed to swell now, blocking off my passageways, preventing me breathing or uttering a sound.

‘But how can they…?’

‘And that’s not all.’ Davy’s voice, more authoritative than I’d ever heard it, cut off Mel’s wail. ‘That’s why Owen’s packing his bag. That’s why Dario’s running round like a headless chicken. That’s why Miles was throwing up in the bathroom and putting all those letters from Leah into the garbage before he’s marched off to the police station. That’s why Astrid looks completely distraught.’

I put my hand on the slightly open door, waiting to push it.

‘But the police are wrong,’ cried Mel, her voice cracking in distress.

‘Are they?’

‘Yes, of course they are. What are you saying, Davy? You don’t mean this. You can’t. This is horrible, just horrible.’

‘We have to look at it clearly, my love, and if that means…’

‘I heard what you were saying,’ I said to Davy.

‘I didn’t mean to make this worse.’

‘No. I agree with you. That’s what the police think and that’s what we’re all trying not to think but thinking anyway.’

‘Are the police treating you properly?’

I shrugged. ‘That’s hardly the point. It’s like a frenzy down at the station. There’s an incident room and photos and charts everywhere, and about thirty police officers charging around. Have you seen Miles?’

‘I think he’s in his room. Packing, or clearing stuff out or something. We’re all being interviewed soon. But everyone’s locked away in their own private space, as if that’s the only place they’re safe.’

‘Except you.’

‘I’ve got Mel.’

‘Lucky you,’ I said. ‘What are your plans? Are you moving out?’

Davy and Mel exchanged a glance.

‘We’re working on it,’ said Davy. ‘What about you?’

‘I think I’d better make some calls,’ I said. ‘I thought it would end badly. But even so…’

I left them to their arrangements and went to find Pippa. As I passed Miles’s room I stopped and listened. I heard things being moved around. For a moment I thought I would go in and try to comfort him. He was my friend and once he’d been more. But as Owen had asked me, who did I trust? Not Miles, not any more. Not Miles or Mick or Dario or Owen, though if Owen knocked on my door I would let him in; I would pull the covers over us and in the darkness I would hold him against me. I carried on to Pippa’s door and, at the sound of her voice, pushed it open and stepped inside.

If her room had been a mess before, now it was in a new phase of chaos. Any clothes that had been in drawers or cupboards had been pulled out and lay in colourful heaps. Any books that had been in piles or on shelves were scattered. Folders were splayed open and papers lay across the floor like leaves in autumn. It took me a moment to find Pippa in the wreckage. She was sitting cross-legged by the side of the mirror, rummaging through a capacious makeup case, tossing stubs of lipstick and cakes of eye-shadow into a bin bag.

‘Hi,’ I said, lowering myself to the floor beside her.

‘Rough time?’

‘Pretty rough.’

‘Do you want to tell me?’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s nothing left to tell. Everything I say I’ve already said a hundred times before. It all feels like a lie now. Does this additional layer of chaos mean you’re packing?’

‘Yup. I’m going to Ned’s tomorrow evening.’

I didn’t ask who Ned was. Instead I picked up a fringed shawl and held it against my cheek, closing my eyes for a second.

‘I’ve ordered a skip,’ continued Pippa. ‘We can dump the stuff we don’t want into it.’

‘Is there anything left after your yard sale?’

Pippa and I looked at each other and didn’t smile. The memory wasn’t so funny now.

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said.

‘The police might object,’ I said. ‘Disposing of evidence.’

She pulled a face.

‘Maybe they can take everything away,’ she said, ‘on condition they don’t bring it back.’

‘I’ve got the money,’ I said.

‘Where?’

‘Here.’ I tapped my pocket.

‘Christ! You’re just carrying it around with you?’

‘I didn’t know where else to put it. The police are about to descend on us and go through everything. I thought it would look odd if they found twenty thousand quid in my knicker drawer.’

‘Is there anything that doesn’t look odd?’

‘I want to divide it up. Can you work out who gets what?’

‘All right,’ said Pippa, vaguely. She picked up a pair of tights and started to ravel it up in her hands, then stretch it out again to check for ladders.

‘Soon?’

‘Fine.’

I remembered this house when we’d first moved in, every room clean, empty and full of possibility, the floorboards echoing when we trod on them, the light streaming in through the uncurtained windows. Gradually it had filled up – with objects, with people, with noise and with history – until it had become overloaded, like a boat buckling and tipping under the weight of too many passengers. But now we set about stripping it down again, and returning it to its original state. Rooms were being emptied, occupants were departing. Pictures were lifted down from walls, leaving patches behind them that Dario had never got round to painting. Hairballs and dust floated in the corners. The skip filled with the rubbish that had been too worthless even to put out for the yard sale, and I went and looked over its yellow rim at odd socks, cracked plates, torn sheets, a broken chair, a twisted bicycle wheel, yellowing newspapers: everything chipped, ripped, wrecked and unloved lay in the bottom. It was like a tide, I thought, that had swept in over the years, carrying us with it, and now was inexorably sweeping out again. Soon all that would be left in the house was the debris, the flotsam and jetsam of the life we’d led there.