Page 89 of The Friend Request

But silence won’t work this time.

Downstairs, the letter box rattles. The post, or a newspaper, or the first journalist. It doesn’t matter. It’s starting.

‘Kim.’ Alex’s voice is very quiet. ‘Answer me.’

I sit on the bed. I put my hands in my lap. I glance at my husband – this decent, loyal, frightened man who killed someone to protect me, who has spent a month under investigation for something I set in motion, who is sitting on the edge of our bed at half past six in the morning waiting to find out whether his wife is the person he thought she was.

I open my mouth.

The bedroom door opens.

Olivia is standing in the doorway. She’s in her pyjamas, her phone in her hand, the screen glowing. Her face is pale. Her eyes are wide. She looks from me to Alex and back again. I can see that she’s been reading, or watching, or both, and her expression is the one I used to see in the mirror when I was seventeen and the world stopped making sense.

‘Mum,’ she says. ‘Mum, what did you do?’

The question fills the air around us. My daughter, my husband, and me. The three of us in this bedroom, in this house, in the life I built and broke and cannot rebuild with another lie.

I look at Olivia.

I don’t have an answer.