He stopped crying.

Silence filled the room.

He turned his head.

He stared at me in horror and realisation that I’d been a witness to everything that had just happened. His face contorted, and so many emotions flickered past I could barely count them. Shame. Pain. Loss. Fear. More shame. So much fucking shame I could barely breathe with it. He reared away from my touch like it had burned him, his mother’s body slipping from his arms as he stood, backing away.

“King,” I said, a crack in my voice. “Oliver.”

He began to shake his head, his eyes huge with fear as he took in the scene. And then he was gone. It took me a moment to get to my feet and run after him. I dashed from the kitchen, down the hall, and to the front entryway, where Bruce’s muscle still lay crouched on the floor in pain. I ran outside, looked up and down the street, but he was nowhere to be seen.

I returned to the house, searching each room to make sure he wasn’t still inside. The place was empty. I walked back down to the kitchen, my gut recoiling at the sight of Bruce and Elaine’s bodies and all that blood. I’d never get it out of my mind, would never be able to wash my memories clean. I had to do something, had to act. I saw the phone on the wall and knew calling the police was the right action. King beating his father was self-defence. He wasn’t in his right mind. Bruce Mitchell was a criminal. Bruce was the one with the gun, the one who killed Elaine. Any jury in the country would be able to see that.

I walked to the phone, picked it up, and started to dial nine-nine-nine. I was on the final nine when I heard a weak cough and looked to my left. My heart soared when I saw Elaine’s eyes flutter open and her chest move up and down with her breathing.

She was alive!

There was so much blood I wasn’t sure how it could be possible, but it was. I hit the final nine on the dialling pad.

“Nine-nine-nine emergency services, how may I help you?”

“I need an ambulance,” I croaked out. “I need an ambulance right away.”

Part Two

After

Sixteen

London, six years later.

My hands were shaking.

All I was doing was holding a piece of paper, and my bloody hands were shaking. I was standing by the open window, trying to get some air, but it wasn’t working. I felt woozy. I had to sit down. I’d already read the letter three times. So I read it again.

Dear Alexis,

I hope you don’t think my letter intrusive, but I found you through the agency you run and some of your past modelling work. My name is Lille Baker, and I’m an artist. I work in a travelling circus, the Circus Spektakulär. We perform all over, but right now we’ve stopped to do some shows in London.

I’ve wanted to send you this letter for weeks, but I held out. I had to wait until we were close enough for you to come. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just email you. Or call. Letters are sort of a lost art form now, right? But what I have to tell you is of such great importance that I felt an email would be too impersonal. A call too abrupt.

I apologise. I’m going off topic. So yes, the circus.

It’s run by a woman named Marina Mitchell. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? Anyway, Marina has a brother. His name is King, Oliver King. He stays with her most of the time; other times, he wanders on his own. I suppose you could say he doesn’t really have a home. King carries around a picture of you, Alexis. It was taken six years ago on a beach in Rome. Do you remember? He treasures this picture, goes crazy if anyone tries to take it.

Why is the picture so important to him?

Did you love each other once?

Do you ever think of him, wonder about him?

I’m sorry. I ask a lot of questions sometimes. It’s just that I worry for King. He’s been on a destructive path for years, and I fear that if something drastic doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to kill himself. He drinks far too much, more and more each day, it seems. I try to help him, we all do, but there’s no point trying to help a person who doesn’t want it. Then I think, if you came, if he could see you, then maybe he would want to be helped. Maybe he’d have something to live for. I see glimpses in him, Alexis, glimpses of a fascinating mind, of a great man from whom circumstance has stolen everything.

Please come and see us. I think you’re the only one who has a chance of saving him.

Yours sincerely,

Lille.

Tears filled my eyes again as my heart pounded. King. He was alive. For so long I’d lost hope. I hadn’t seen him since that night at his mum’s house, where he’d fled after he thought he killed his father. He hadn’t killed him. The paramedics managed to revive Bruce, and just a few short weeks later, he was sent to prison for the attempted murder of Elaine. It was a hard time for all of us, especially since King had all but become a ghost. We searched high and low, spoke with everyone he’d ever known, but he’d vanished without a trace. I even quizzed Elaine about the gypsy woman, but she had no clue who I was talking about. She was the one missing link, and I knew deep in my heart that if I could just discover who she was, I would find him.

Now I held a letter in my hands that explained everything.

On the other side of it was an inner city location where the circus was currently camped for shows. It was no more than a car journey away, and my skin prickled to think he was so near. Was this real, or was someone playing a trick?

No, it had to be real. No one other than Bruce would think to do something so cruel, and he’d died in prison six months after he was put there, shanked by a young guy who didn’t want him coming in and taking over. I thought it was a fitting death.

Bruce Mitchell.

Marina Mitchell.

King had a sister. How had I not known this? How had Elaine not known? A memory of the gypsy woman King once said was family flashed in my mind again. This Marina must have been his half-sister, born of Bruce and a different mother. That’s why Elaine didn’t know her. But why the hell would King be living with someone who had anything to do with that monster? It was all too much to take in, too confusing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to make sense of it.

After he’d disappeared, I’d gone through all the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance. Now each of those stages were rushing back all at once, becoming a strange muddle of hope and anger, happiness and fear.

I’d finally settled into my life. How could a single letter flip everything on its axis?

Four years ago, I’d stopped modelling and started up my own agency. It did so well that I’d finally saved up enough money for a mortgage, and had purchased a small two-bedroom house in Waltham Forest. Elaine, who I’d grown close to over the years, sold her big house in Bloomsbury that held too many bad memories, and bought herself a small cottage in Waltham in order to be close to us.

Us.

The very thought made my tears increase. Life had been so hard since King disappeared. For a long time, I couldn’t move on. My heart refused to believe he’d stay away of his own volition, but at the same time I understood the trauma he must have been suffering to think he’d killed a man with his own bare hands. Now I was being told he was out there, close enough for me to reach. To touch. To pull close.

And yet, here I was living in my little house with the love of my life. The one who’d come along after King and mended my broken heart.

I heard him pull on the doorknob and step into the room, probably wondering why I was upset, why I was crying. I wiped at my tears and tried to plaster on a brave face, not wanting to worry him.