59. Now

When will you open your eyes?As I drive home from the station, Lydia's voice comes back to me.

I've just reported my brother for attempted murder. Murder and what else? We were getting along just fine. Murder and rape?

That's what I think happened, isn't it? My big, handsome brother never had anyone say no to him and he couldn't take it.

My eyes feel like they've been punched.

I remember once when we were walking back from the woods, the sun heavy on our backs, and we came across our cat, lying on the grass verge with a broken leg.

Tristan twisted her neck till it snapped.

Because it's kinder, he said.

Even at six I knew it could've been fixed.

I ran home crying. Mother had patted my head and Father had shaken Tristan's hand and called him brave.

I pull to a stop outside our gates.

If we hadn't been there when he'd come on to Georgia, would he have tried to kill her? We had planned for him to flirt with her, then laugh and walk away when she begged for it. But he didn't do that, did he?

Come on to?Is that what I call attempted rape?

Why can I think about him killing someone more easily than I can consider rape?

I stare out into the gloom, the long drive stretching into darkness.

Guilt runs through me. All the times I've heard mums discussing how to talk to their daughters about consent and I've nodded along while rolling my eyes internally.

Is it all part of me avoiding thinking about this one thing? Have I made Jenna vulnerable with my own inability to face the truth?

Georgia said no, and he'd kept going, and maybe I pushed her over, maybe Mina got in a punch and a kick and Lydia pulled out some hair, but I know why I ran out from the bushes. I ran out to stop him. After it happened I would never have dreamed of calling it ‘attempted rape', never in a million years, but as I was watching it some part of me knew he had to be stopped.

But does that even count for anything?

God. I remember him on the way back to school. What was it he said?

‘Maybe Baa Baa Barbra's too frigid for me, but she's just a little girl. Mama Smith is all woman, and we all know how wet she is for me.'

I open the car door and spit the taste of bile onto the lane. I breathe for a moment, thinking I might be sick, then pull my hand across my mouth andclose the door again.

How can I go back to the house?

The policeman told me to act as normal. But how? I've been doing it my whole life and only just realised and now I have to go back to doing it again.

The policeman said I'd have to wait to speak to Bevan for a proper update, but that she'd spoken to Georgia Smith, who had been at home and hadn't given them any leads. The parents searching around the school had found nothing and a few groups were working their way around all the local beaches. They were waiting for Glastonbury security to complete a search but had already notified a dog team.

Maybe I don't need to go home. But the other thing they said is that most missing children just turn up in the morning.

I pull round the house to the grain store and hurry back.

I always knew there was something Tristan didn't want anyone to see on that tape. Why is this the first time I'm allowing myself to really think about that?

Lydia knew, immediately, without even knowing about the tape. And so did Mina, I think.

I wonder again: what if Tristan knew Jenna had the tape, before his children told him? Is it possible that he did something to her?

I walk out of the grain store and back towards the house, the great hulking mass of it.

No – no. He's my brother. She's his niece.

She's his pet.