‘Now your turn,’ Ellie said.

‘Do you think he’s still alive now?’ Sam said, his head staying down.

‘I don’t know. I think so. He opened his eyes when I was there.’

‘He saw you?’

Ellie nodded. ‘But I don’t know how aware he was of anything around him.’

Sam sat in silence.

‘Is he your dad?’ Ellie said.

A nod.

‘Who attacked him?’

Sam rubbed his hands.

‘Was it you?’ Ellie said.

Sam closed his eyes, pinched at the bridge of his nose.

‘I saw blood on your T-shirt.’

He nodded again.

‘Was it an accident?’

Sam raised his head and looked at her. ‘No.’

Ellie thought for a moment. Sam looked at his phone.

‘Is this to do with Libby?’ Ellie said.

He picked up his phone and tried to call her again. Still no answer. He nodded as he threw the phone on to the bed.

‘Were you protecting her?’ Ellie said.

Sam hesitated. ‘I was trying to.’

Just then the front door opened downstairs. Ben was home. Sam tensed up at the sound and Ellie put her hands out to placate him.

‘It’s just my husband,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t know you’re here, doesn’t know anything about this.’

A voice from downstairs. ‘Ellie?’

Ellie walked across the room, placed her hand on the door handle. ‘Stay in here, it’s safe. I’ll go and speak to him. I won’t tell him about you.’ She looked at the floor. ‘Don’t walk about or we’ll hear you downstairs.’

She opened the door, looking at Sam. ‘OK?’

‘OK.’

8

Ben spoke as she entered the kitchen.

‘Something’s happened.’

He’d already flipped open the laptop on the table and was typing in their password.

Logan1.

Ellie’s hands had typed that password into countless computers and online accounts over the years, she could hit the sequence of keys every time at speed without thinking or looking. A muscle memory, completely subconscious. If she slowed down to think about it, it felt clumsy and awkward, and she would get it wrong. Like glimpsing something in the corner of your eye that disappeared if you tried to look at it directly.

Ben fired up Twitter. He was much more internet savvy than she was, all that time in obscure conspiracy chatrooms and the like. Ellie thought about Logan’s Facebook page, felt a familiar itch to check in and see if anyone had posted anything. Then she thought about Sam upstairs. When she got a moment she would look him up on Facebook, his sister too, find out all about his life, family, friends, whatever it was that had brought him to her. She looked at the ceiling. How many inches away were his feet? The ceiling was covered in grease and cooking stains, cobwebs strung across the corners. Who ever cleaned their kitchen ceiling?

Ben was typing away. Ellie didn’t do Twitter, didn’t understand the appeal. Just lots of celebrities showing off, and angry, lonely people shouting into the void. Every second news story these days was about people being abusive on Twitter, misogyny, racism, all the bitter bile of humanity in one handy place.

‘What’s happened?’ she said.

‘There’s police everywhere,’ Ben said.

She looked over his shoulder.

He typed in: ‘Why are there police all over South Queensferry?’

Then he searched #queensferry #police.

He turned to her. ‘I was flyering up The Loan when three cop cars went bombing past, sirens and lights on. By the time I got to Kirkliston Road one of them was parked across Viewforth Place blocking the street. I spoke to the officer but he wouldn’t tell me anything, just that there was an incident and they’d cordoned off the area. So I went round the back way, but Loch Place and Lovers Lane were blocked too. That means about ten streets are closed. That’s some incident.’

He didn’t wait for a reaction from her, but turned back to the laptop, his conspiracy brain kicking in. Before the jump, Ben had not exactly been a passive acceptor of authority, but since Logan died he didn’t trust anything that anyone in power told him. Watching the news, he provided a running commentary on the lies they were being told and why it was exactly what they wanted you to think, how big corporations or government or the police were covering up dark secrets, misdirecting public attention, treating us like idiots. Ellie had some sympathy for the point of view but he’d gone too deep. You had to trust someone or something at some point, didn’t you, or else how do you go about living in a society? Of course, how you went about living was a question she hadn’t yet found her own answer to.

Ben pointed at the screen. ‘Look at this.’

He scrolled down through the feed. A handful of people had posted.

WTF I cannae get to my fkn house, cops have closed roads. #viewforthroad #queensferry

Some shit going down in Inchcolm Terrace, crawling with polis. #queensferry

#queensferry Counted 6 cop cars, a van and amblnc in Inchcholm Terr, number 25?

Holy fukk!!! Guys in they white forensic suits in garden of 23 Inchcolm Terrace #queensferry #CSIshit

Two filth at door just asked if I’d seen anything!! Fuck! #queensferry

‘What do you think?’ Ben said.

‘I have no idea,’ Ellie said.

Ben clicked Refresh again and again. One or two new posts appeared but no new info. Ellie thought about the people in white suits going over the garden, the house, the kitchen. Her fingerprints on the doorbell, the front door handle and the glass of the patio. She tried to remember if she’d touched anything else. What about the neighbours, had anyone seen her walking down the street earlier, going up the path, opening the front door? Or running out the back and over the fence? Had they seen Sam or Libby running from the house earlier? Was there CCTV around there, or neighbourhood watch? She thought of the footage of Logan on the bridge. She thought about being up there this morning with Sam, there would be footage of that too. We are always being watched.

The Twitter feed began to fill up with news flashes. Local STV and BBC services were reporting an incident, but they were an hour behind the action, as always. Then Ellie read something that made her fists tighten.

My m8’s dad is a cop, says another cop’s been stabbed in his house on Inchcolm T!! At hospital now, could die. #copkiller #queensferry

Cop killer. This was instantly picked up by other tweeters, the network going at it.

Polis stabbed at home in #queensferry. His kids missing apparently. Revenge by a crim?! Cop into dodgy shit? Domestic? Shitting hell.

The speed of it all terrified her.

Ben was on Refresh.

Refresh, refresh, refresh.

More opinions, more facts, more bullshit and nonsense, teeming into the ether like an airborne virus it was impossible to escape.

She turned away from the laptop and went to the window, looked out at the Forth. The sea was a constant. Changing all the time, yes, but somehow also reliable. It took her son and it would take others too. If sea levels rose, this house would be one of the first to go, submerged beneath all that implacable calm. She pictured water pouring in through the doors and windows of her home, imagined being swept up in it, the taste of salt on her lips as she swallowed it down. Maybe a handful of molecules from Logan’s ashes slipping down her throat.

The sea had almost taken Sam this morning but Ellie had stopped it, she challenged the water and won. She was scratching at her most recent tattoo. She pushed her sleeve up and looked at the patch of red skin. Maybe it would never heal, maybe it would stay raw and bloody forever.

‘What do you think?’ Ben said.

She clenched her teeth and turned away from the bridges.

‘About what?’ she said.

He pointed at the laptop. ‘All this.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t think anything.’

She heard something, a movement upstairs maybe. She went over to the kettle and switched it on to cover the noise, glanced up at the ceiling once Ben had turned back to the screen.