She tells me to stop crying again, and when I don’t the second time, she takes the pistol from my shaky hands, pulls down my trousers, and smacks me hard on the bum with it. I scream and she does it again.

John is looking the other way. He’s staring at a perfect-looking tree and has been smoking one cigarette after the other since we arrived. I see a pretty letter A carved into the bark and wonder when he had time to do that.

He turns to face us both. “I really don’t think this is necessary.”

“They sent a coffin as a warning, John. I won’t lose her too,” Maggie replies through her teeth.

“She can’t do it.”

“Yes, she can.”

“I’m telling you, she can’t.”

“And I’m telling you to shut the fuck up.”

He stares at the ground.

I stop crying because I know Maggie won’t stop hitting me until I do.

She gives me the gun back without saying anything, then pulls up my trousers. I’m so mad I think about pointing it right at her, but she’d probably kill me if I did that. I don’t want to disappear, and I don’t want to die in the dirt in a place called Epping Forest. I know she loves me really. She must do, she says so all the time.

I point the gun at the lowest tin can in the tree. I close one eye and hold the gun still, just like Maggie showed me. Then I pull the part she calls a Tigger, like in Winnie-the-Pooh, and the tin can falls to the ground.

Maggie smiles, and her happy face looks at me for the first time all day. She picks me up, as though the bad stuff she just did to me didn’t happen, so I pretend that it didn’t happen too and put my arms around her neck. She smells so nice. When I grow up, I’m going to wear number five just like her. I don’t even care what the other numbers smell like. When Maggie wears her happy face, I like to pretend she doesn’t have another one.

“I knew you could do it, Baby Girl.” She looks at John, even though she is speaking to me.

I do it again, and this time John takes a photo of me on his Polaroid camera. I don’t get to see what I look like holding a gun though, because Maggie snatches the photo from his hand before the picture even appears, then uses John’s lighter to burn it away into nothing.

“Idiot,” she says, and he stares at his feet as though they are something interesting.

I hit the tin cans ten more times, and when Maggie says I have learned enough for one day, John drives us home. Maggie sits in the back with me, instead of next to him. She holds my hand and smiles, and I’m glad that she loves me again. When we get back to the shop, Maggie shows me where the gun is hidden and tells me that I must never, ever, touch it unless she tells me to. She says now that I’m a big girl, we need a code, and the code is “Say your prayers.” I think this is funny because we never pray, but she tells me off for giggling. I can see she is wearing her most serious face, so I stop. She gives me the best present ever for being a good girl—a Wonder Woman costume, and I am allowed to wear it all day.

In the evening, after the shop is closed, the three of us watch Cagney & Lacey together in their bed, eating cheese on toast. I like this program, it’s my favorite TV show ever. Both of the women are pretty and clever and they shoot guns. In my head, I pretend that Maggie and me are Cagney and Lacey, chasing all the bad men.

When the program ends, Maggie switches off the TV with the remote control and looks at me.

“If I said, ‘Say your prayers,’ right now, what would you do, Baby Girl?”

I think real hard because I know that I must not get this wrong. I know it’s important.

“I would go and get the gun from the hiding place real quick.”

She nods. “Then what would you do?”

“Shoot it.”

“Shoot it and what?”

“Shoot it and keep shooting until nobody moves.”

“Clever girl, that’s the right answer.”

Forty-four

London, 2017

I see it out of the corner of my eye as I take another sip of champagne.

A flash. I’m sure I didn’t imagine it this time.

For as long as I can remember, I have hated having my photo taken. I’m not sure why. I didn’t even want a photographer at my wedding, not that Ben seemed to mind. There was just one little photo of our big day, taken by a stranger on the street outside the registry office. In some places in the world people believe that having your photo taken steals a part of your soul. My fears don’t stretch quite that far, but I do worry that a camera can capture something in me that I would rather remained hidden.

I try to listen to the conversation I am pretending to take part in, and I see it again, the flash of a camera phone. If I was in any doubt before, the sight of the person holding it confirms my suspicions. Jennifer Jones stares in my direction; she has the audacity to smile. I don’t know what to do. I look around wildly in search of some form of assistance.

Just like Alicia, she should not be here.

I don’t just despise Jennifer Jones, I hate her, and everyone like her; disgorging all my secrets, one by one, forming a tower of truths I would rather nobody else could see. My secrets are my own, and I don’t like them being shared. I look around again, and then, perhaps because of everything that is happening in my private life, or perhaps because I’ve consumed far more alcohol than was wise this evening, I decide to deal with the matter myself and march across the courtyard.

“How dare you come here tonight,” I spit at her.

She laughs in my face. “I’m just doing my job. If you’re looking for someone to blame, try the woman who tipped me off about you. You were set up by someone you know and it’s the easiest money I’ve ever made!”

Her words wind me. “Who?”

“What’s it worth?”

“It’s worth me not smashing my glass in your face.” For a moment I think I might mean it, but she doesn’t look worried at all. If anything, the whole exchange seems to delight her.

“I thought I saw her here earlier,” she says, looking over my shoulder.

Her.

“Who?” I look around the room, expecting to see Alicia in her line of vision.

“She wouldn’t tell me her name. She looked a bit like you, dressed like you too. Same hair, trench coat, dark glasses, red lipstick. A little older than you are. Ringing any bells?” She’s describing the stalker. This proves it, that everything that has happened is all connected. The woman pretending to be me was having an affair with my husband, it was her red lipstick I found under the bed, and she used my laptop to send emails calling herself Maggie to frame me.

“Of course, a journalist needs more than one source, and I needed photographic evidence, but luckily Jack was only too happy to help, taking selfies of the two of you together in your dressing room and sending them to me.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“Are you quite all right? You’ve turned very pale. You’re not going to throw up, are you? That would ruin the video…”

I look and see her phone still tilted up in my direction. “You’re filming this?”

“I’m afraid so, honey. They’re making redundancies at TBN again, and a journo’s gotta do what a journo’s gotta do to survive in this business nowadays. It’s not personal.”