“You’re pretty—without the makeup, I mean,” she says, and I remember what a mess I must look. I haven’t had a shower or washed my hair, or even brushed my teeth for at least forty-eight hours. “You look different in real life to how you look on the internet.”

“Can you search the internet on this?” I point at the computer in the cell.

“Don’t be daft. This is prison, we’re not allowed internet in our cells or anywhere else.”

“How then?”

“I get it on my iPhone.”

“You’re allowed iPhones in prison?”

“Of course not. Are you thick or something?” She reaches down inside the front of her trousers, and it looks as if she removes a phone from her knickers. “I like to make friends with people. I do something for them, they do something for me. Being in here isn’t so different from life on the outside. This prison is just a little smaller than the one you’re used to, that’s all. The modern world has made prisoners of us all, only fools think they are free. There’s 4G in the corner of Building D, that’s why so many people sign up to do the art classes, so they can get internet. It sure ain’t about wanting to paint pretty pictures. I can’t refresh the page in here, but look, here’s you on the TBN website.” She holds out the phone for me to see. I’m reluctant to touch it at first, knowing where it has been, but I soon forget all about that when I see the pictures on the screen. “There’s you on the left, wearing all your makeup with your hair all fancy, and there’s your husband on the right. Why did you kill him?”

I don’t answer. I’m too busy staring at the photo that is captioned Ben Bailey, husband and victim.

My hands are shaking so badly, I’m scared I might drop the phone. I hold it tight, not willing to give it back yet, then sit down on the bunk, unable to articulate or process what my eyes have just seen.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

If I could answer, it would be no.

I look at the faces on the screen again, but nothing has changed. I barely recognize myself, but I don’t know the man pictured next to me at all.

I don’t recognize the man they claim I killed, because the man in the picture is not my husband. It isn’t Ben.

Fifty-one

Maggie is supposed to be clearing a house in Acton, but she can’t resist slowly driving past Aimee’s Notting Hill home a couple more times first. A magpie swoops down in front of the van, and Maggie pulls over and salutes before it flies out of view.

“One for sorrow, two for joy,” she mutters, then takes a noisy sip from her flask of coffee, while quietly observing the scene just ahead. The blue-and-white police tape is still flapping in the wind, sealing off the building, but the police vans and the press are gone. She supposes that they have found everything they need for now; everything that she left for them to find, including the lighter gel, the poorly cleaned bloodstains, the body.

She remembers the first time she visited the house with such fondness. He’d shot himself in the head, the real Ben Bailey. Suicide. He’d lost his job and was quite upset about it. Bits of blood and brains were still on the wall when Maggie was contracted to clear out his possessions, but she didn’t mind that. It wasn’t her job to clean up, only to get rid. She had only recently started the business, which was probably why she got the job: she imagined most people would have turned it down because it was too gruesome and gory. But Maggie had never been afraid of ghosts, at least not dead ones. She had a strange feeling as soon as she stepped inside, as if it were meant to be. Ben didn’t have any real family waiting to argue over his prized possessions. He didn’t have many of those either.

She took her time going through his things, learning all about the man he had been. She found his passport, driver’s license, bank statements, and utility bills. Identity fraud is so easy when you work in Maggie’s business, everything was right there, just inviting her to play God and bring the dead man back to life. She fell for the house he lived in, as well as the idea of him. Not how the house was back then, but how she knew it could be, with a little work. Some people just can’t see the potential in things, but she could, Maggie had always been good at that. Just look at the potential she saw in Aimee as a child. She was right about Aimee, and she knew that she was right about Ben too.

Maggie knew that Ben Bailey would make the perfect pretend boyfriend, and then the perfect pretend husband for Aimee the actress, so she wasn’t going to let a little thing such as his being dead get in the way. All she had to do was find the right person to play his part, and she didn’t have to look very far.

Fifty-two

I don’t know how anyone can sleep inside a prison cell. It is never quiet. Even in my dreams I hear the murmurs, shouts, and sometimes screams of strangers beyond the gray walls. It’s even noisier when I find myself alone inside my head. The familiar cast of my bad dreams delivered a stellar performance this evening. A standing ovation of insomnia was the only suitable response to the story on the stage of my mind. I won’t get the part in the Fincher movie now, that’s for sure. I’ve lost everything and everyone.

I feel stiff, so I stand and stretch a little, getting a whiff of my own body odor as I raise my arms. The small frosted-glass window in the cell is open just a fraction. As I lean my face against the bars in front of it to gulp the fresh air, I spot a magpie on the lawn outside. I salute the bird, unable to remember when or why I started doing such an odd, superstitious thing.

As Hilary predicted, she has been allowed out for various classes, and to exercise in the yard, but I have been confined to my cell while I wait to be successfully added to the system. I appreciate I haven’t been here long, but I think it’s safe to say that the system is broken. If it weren’t for my cellmate’s generosity, I still wouldn’t have had anything to eat or drink, but luckily Hilary seems to have a never-ending supply of tinned beans and cartons of Ribena. I normally avoid sugary drinks, but I daren’t risk the water coming out of the tap. I’ve already been ill, and having to go to the toilet with nothing but a thin curtain to separate me from a complete stranger is worse than degrading. I keep thinking about the photo of Ben that Hilary showed me on her phone. It wasn’t him. I realize now that the reason I’ve been unable to slot all the pieces of what has happened together, is because they don’t fit. Not that I’ve been able to tell anyone, not that they’d believe me if I did.

I hear the increasingly familiar sound of keys jangling behind the cell door, and I presume that Hilary has been escorted back from her latest excursion. But it isn’t Hilary. It’s a prison guard, the same one who brought me in yesterday. He looks as though he hasn’t slept either. The collection of dandruff has disappeared from one of his shoulders though, and I wonder whether he or someone else brushed it away.

“Well, come on then, I haven’t got all day,” he says in my direction, without actually looking at me.

I get up and follow him out of the cell, retracing the journey we made yesterday. It takes longer than it should, waiting for him to lock each door behind us, before taking a few more steps, then stopping to unlock the next.