Oh God, I must remember. I must remember what happened because someone is dead, and the police are outside, they are going to come and ask me, and how can I know, how can I know what I’m saying, what I’m revealing, if I don’t know what happened?

I see myself, running, running through the forest with the blood on my hands and on my face and on my clothes …

‘Please,’ I say, and my voice is close to cracking, close to pleading, and I hate myself for being so weak and needy. ‘Please tell me, please help me, what’s happened? What’s happened to my friends? Why was I covered in such a lot of blood? My head wound wasn’t that bad. Where did all the blood come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says softly, and there’s real compassion in her voice this time. ‘I don’t know, pet. Let me get the doctor and perhaps he can tell you more. In the meantime, I want you to eat some breakfast, you’ve got to keep your strength up and the doctor will want to see an appetite.’

And then she backs out of the door with the trolley in front of her, and the door swings shut, and I am alone with my plastic bowl of Rice Crispies popping and clicking away as they soak into sugary mush.

I should get up. I should force my weak, woolly limbs to do their duty, and I should swing them out of bed and march into the corridor and demand answers from those police officers outside. But I don’t. I just sit there, and tears roll down my face, and drip off my chin into the Rice Crispies, and the smell of the clementine is heady and overripe, reminding me of something I cannot remember, and cannot forget.

Please, I think, please. Pull yourself together, you stupid bitch. Get up. Find out what happened. Find out who’s dead.

But I don’t move. And not just because my head hurts, and my legs hurt, and my muscles feel like wet tissue.

I don’t move because I am afraid. Because I don’t want to hear the name the police are going to say.

And because I am afraid they are here for me.

20

THE BRAIN DOESN’T remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories.

I have to try to get the facts.

But I don’t know if I’m remembering what happened, or what I want to have happened. I am a writer. I’m a professional liar. It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation.

And the harder I push, the more the facts dissolve beneath my fingers …

I know that I woke with a jump. I don’t know what time it was, but it was still dark. Beside me Nina was sitting up in bed, her dark eyes wide and glittering.

‘Did you hear that?’ she whispered.

I nodded. Footsteps on the landing. A door opening very softly.

My heart was beating in my throat as I pushed back the duvet and grabbed my dressing gown. I remembered the kitchen door swung wide, the footsteps in the snow.

We should have checked the rest of the house.

At the door I stood listening for a second, and then opened it with infinite caution. Clare and Flo were standing outside, their eyes wide, faces bleached pale with fear. Flo was holding the gun.

‘Did you hear something?’ I whispered, as low as I could. Clare gave a single, sharp nod, and pointed to the stairs, her finger stabbing downwards. I listened hard, trying to still my shaky breathing and thudding heart. There was a scratching sound, and then a clear, definite thunk, as of a door being softly closed. There was someone down there.

‘Tom?’ I mouthed. But even as I did, his door opened a crack and his face peered out.

‘Did you … that sound?’ he whispered. Clare gave a grim nod.

This time it was no open door. No wind. This time we could all hear it: clear footsteps as someone made their way through the tiled kitchen, across the parquet floor of the hallway, and then the soft, definite creak of a foot on the first of the stairs.

Somehow we had drawn together into a little knot I felt someone’s hand scrabbling for mine. Flo was at the centre, the gun raised, though its muzzle was shaking badly. I put my free hand out to steady it.

There was another creak on the stairs and an indrawn breath from all of us, then a figure rounded the newel post half-way up, silhouetted against the plate-glass window that overlooked the forest.

It was a man – a tall man. He was dressed in some kind of dark hoodie, and I couldn’t see his face. He was looking down at his phone, the screen glowing ghost-white in the darkness.

‘Fuck off and leave us alone!’ Flo screamed, and the gun went off.

There was a deafening, catastrophic bang, and the sound of shattering glass, and the gun kicked like a horse. I remember that – and I remember that people fell over.

I remember that I looked up to see – it didn’t make sense – the huge plate-glass window shattered – the glass spattered outwards onto the snow, clattering onto the wooden stairs.

I remember the man on the stairs gave one choking exclamation – more of shock than of pain – and then he fell all of a heap, thudding slowly down the stairs like a stuntman in a film.

I don’t know who turned on the lights. But they flooded the tall hallway with a brightness that made me wince and cover my eyes – and I saw.

I saw the pale frosted stairs splashed with blood, and the shattered window, and the long, slow smear of gore where the man’s body had slithered down to the ground floor.

‘Oh my God,’ Flo whimpered. ‘The gun— the gun was loaded!’

When the nurse comes back, I am crying.

‘What happened?’ I manage. ‘Someone is dead – please tell me, please tell me who’s dead!’

‘I can’t tell you, love.’ She looks genuinely sorry. ‘I wish I could, but I can’t. But I’ve brought Dr Miller here to take a look at you.’

‘Good morning, Leonora,’ he says, coming across to the bed. His voice is soft, pitying. I want to punch him and his fucking compassion. ‘I’m sorry we’re a bit tearful today.’

‘Someone is dead,’ I say very clearly, trying to keep my breath even, keep myself from gulping and sobbing. ‘Someone is dead, and no one will tell me who. And the police are sitting outside. Why?’

‘Let’s not worry about that at the moment—’

‘I am worried!’ I shout. Heads in the corridor turn. The doctor puts out a soothing hand, patting my leg beneath the blanket in a way that makes me want to shrug and shudder. I am bruised. I am hurt. I am wearing a hospital gown that’s open at the back and I’ve lost my dignity along with everything else. Do not fucking touch me, you patronising arsehole. I want to go home.

‘Look,’ he says, ‘I understand that you’re upset, and the police will hopefully have some answers for you, but I’d like to examine you, ensure that you’re up to speaking to them, and I can only do that if you’re calm. Do you understand, Leonora?’

I nod my head, mutely, and then turn my face to the wall while he examines the dressing on my head, checks my pulse and blood pressure against the readings on the machine. I close my eyes, let the indignities fade away. I answer his questions.

My name is Leonora Shaw.

I’m twenty-six.

Today is … Here I have to be helped, but the nurse prompts me. It’s Sunday. I have not even been here twelve hours. In which case, it’s 16th November. I think this counts as disorientation rather than memory loss.

Cameron is prime minister.

No, I have no nausea. My vision is fine, thanks.

Yes, I am having trouble recovering some memories. There are some things that you shouldn’t have to remember.

‘Well, you seem to be doing remarkably well,’ Dr Miller says at last. He hangs his stethoscope round his neck and puts his little torch back in his top pocket. ‘All the observations overnight are fine, and your scan is very reassuring. The memory trouble is concerning me a little bit – it’s quite typical to lose the few minutes before a collision but it sounds like you’re having trouble a little bit further back than that, is that right?’

I nod reluctantly, thinking of the patchy, staccato blasts of images that invaded my head throughout the night: the trees, the blood, the swinging headlights.