‘It’s not your fault. Anyway the reason I’m calling is I want to borrow a car.’

‘A car?’

Dad hardly uses his, right? And you two can share yours while

I’m using it.’

‘What’s wrong with yours? Oh,’ she says, figuring it out. “I

don’t know if it’s a good idea.’

“I’m not going to wreck it, Mum.’

“I don’t…’

“I need this, okay? I need you guys to trust me.’

‘Of course we trust you. But won’t they have taken your licence off you?’

‘They went easy on me because of my history’ I say, which is

a complete lie. My licence has been taken off me. If I get caught driving I’ll be heading straight back to jail. There’ll be fines. It’s the Quentin James factor.

‘I’ll bring it over to you,’ Mum says. “I’m sure Dad won’t

mind.’

We both know that he will. I hang up the phone and hand the

white pages back to Mrs Adams.

“I wouldn’t be trusting you,’ she says, then she offers me one of the muffins she’s just baked, as if some grandmotherly gene inside her can’t prevent her from reaching out. I grab one before she can change her mind, figuring it’s the healthiest thing I’ve eaten in weeks.

‘You know, Theo, I don’t mean to sound hard on you, not after

everything that’s happened, so please, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s never too late to pull yourself together. We’re always next door if you need some help along the way’

I thank her for the use of her phone and for the muffin. She

gives me another one to take home with me. If more people were as forgiving and as helpful, maybe we could cut away some of the cancer that has set into the bones of this city.

It’ll take my mother an hour to get here with the car, so I kill some time by going to buy a newspaper. I keep thinking people

will notice me, that they’ll know who I am and what I have done, but nobody pays me any attention because my photo isn’t in the paper, only my name. The guy at the shop knows me, though,

because I’ve been coming here for years. He looks at me, looks down at the front page, and looks at me again. He seems to search for something to say, and I think all his angry one-liners trip over each other and he ends up saying nothing. He even gives me the right amount of change. I get back home and read the article.

It’s all about the accident. About me. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I read the article about Father Julian but it doesn’t reveal anything I don’t already know. At least my name isn’t mentioned here — yet.

I switch on the TV and watch a couple of minutes of the

morning news. Father Julian’s murder is the headline, and it looks like it’s going to be a busy day for the media. Casey Horwell gives a report. She talks about the murder weapon being found and she says where, offering my name as if she knew all along what I was capable of, her smirk suggesting she could see this coming even if the police couldn’t. I wonder how in the hell she found out where the weapon was found and who her source is. She talks about

Father Julian’s tongue being removed. I get angry just looking at her, and have to turn the TV off or risk throwing the remote at it.

I start to tidy the house and do some more laundry. Then

I spend a few minutes in my daughter’s bedroom. The police came through here last night, but they haven’t messed it up, just left things slightly askew. They showed some respect. They searched this room and found nothing except a lonely shrine and evidence of an even lonelier parent. Daxter looks up at me from the bed.

He follows me back down the house and I fill up his food bowl.

Six months ago I had a spare bedroom that seemed to be

a magnet for all the crap in my life that I couldn’t seem to fit anywhere else in the house or garage. These days it’s an office — or at least was until last night. I sit down at the desk and drag a pad out from the drawer. I start writing down the names and the dates of the women who were killed. I start compiling as many of the notes as I can remember, but the last four weeks have been a haze of alcohol, of guilt, of anger at the priest and at myself, and the small details have all slipped away, drowned beneath an ocean of self-resentment. I do the best I can with the details I remember, and I start to create another timeline.

When my mother arrives she looks around the house, unable

to stop herself from commenting about the mess, the smell, the stuffy air, the broken window. She looks me over. The gash in my head has closed back up, but it isn’t pretty. The bruises on my face she attributes to the accident, the same way Schroder and Landry did. There is a huge bruise running down the side of my neck,

and she can’t see the bruise across my chest from the seatbelt.

I have cuts all over my hands; the end of the finger bandage is stained with blood.

My mum is in her late sixties but thinks she is in her forties and that I’m still nine years old. Her hair isn’t quite as grey as my neighbour’s, and her glasses aren’t quite as big — but I figure in ten years they’ll be a match.

‘You need to go to a doctor,’ she says.

“I’m fine. I’ve already been checked over.’

‘Doesn’t look like they did a good job.’

She starts to tidy up. I tell her not to bother, but the only

thing she doesn’t bother to do is listen to my requests. Mum tells me how disappointed Bridget would be if she knew what was

happening, not just about the drunk driving but also the way I’ve been treating myself lately. I keep saying “I know’ over and over, but she doesn’t seem to get tired hearing it. After nearly an hour she lets me drive her back home and I keep the car.

“I’m also strapped for cash,’ I say, ‘and I need a new phone.

I hate asking, but can you help me out here?’

‘There’s already some in the glovebox,’ she says. ‘We worry

about you, Theo. More than you think. Are you going to come in and say hello to your Father?’

“I don’t know. I guess that depends on how disapproving he is

that I’m borrowing his car.’

“Then you’d best be on your way’ she says, grinning at me.

She leans over then, and gives me a hug, and for the briefest of moments I feel like everything is going to be okay.

When I get to the library I open the glovebox and find an

envelope with a thousand dollars in cash. She must have dropped into a bank on the way. She knew I didn’t forget to pay the phone bill, that I didn’t pay it because I haven’t worked in weeks. I suddenly feel like turning around and giving it all back — the money and the car — because I don’t deserve anybody to worry

about me. But I don’t. There are too many dead girls, too many dead caretakers and a dead priest, all pressing me forward. Plus somebody out there tried to frame me for murder.

The library is warm and quiet. Plenty of people who live in

different worlds from me are sitting down reading about worlds similar to the one I’m falling into. I find the newspaper sections on the computer and print out all the articles that mention

the missing girls. There are the ones I got from beneath Bruce Alderman’s bed, plus the stories that have been in the papers

since the girls were discovered. I spend the rest of the afternoon re-reading these stories and printing them out. I print out the stories about Bruce Alderman’s suicide and about his Father’s

disappearance too. I end up with a stack of paper dedicated to the dead almost a centimetre thick.

I leave the library and hit five o’clock traffic. SUVs are blocking views at intersections, and not for the first time I figure they’re the reason everybody in this world is going nuts. It sure as hell was my reason. I look at the money my parents gave me, and

the maths is simple — there’s enough here for me to drink my

way out of this and every other problem for the next few weeks.