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Kelly’s campus noticeboard ad for a flatmate and they’d moved into a cheap dump of a house and spent three years passing and failing, freezing through winter, drinking too much and laughing more than Liv thought possible. Kelly and Jason getting together that last year had changed the sleeping arrangements but not the dynamics. It was never Kelly-and-Jason. It was Kelly, the friend she found on the first day of infants school, and Jason, her surrogate brother.
    â€˜So what are the police doing about it?’ Jason took her empty mug and put it on the coffee table.
    â€˜I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask that. The cop thought it might be someone I know.’
    â€˜What? No,’ Kelly said.
    â€˜He asked if I knew anyone who’d want to hurt me.’ She remembered the look on Thomas’s face tonight andhis anger on other occasions they’d fought. ‘He asked if it could be Thomas.’
    There was a second of silence as Kelly and Jason exchanged glances.
    â€˜Did it look like Thomas?’ Kelly asked.
    â€˜I don’t know. All I saw was a man in black. He was too close and it happened so fast.’
    â€˜He was at the hospital, though,’ Kelly said.
    Liv had thought about that, too. ‘A couple of hours later. The car park is only fifteen minutes from the hospital.’
    â€˜Oh, come on, Liv,’ Jason said. ‘Thomas is a fucking dickhead but he wouldn’t pull on a balaclava and jump you in a car park.’
    â€˜Yes, I know. You’re right.’ Thomas had cut her out of his life but he wouldn’t beat her up. It was good to hear Jason say it, though.
    â€˜It was just bad luck you were there,’ he said.
    She pulled a face, a cynical that’d-be-right gesture.
    â€˜It’s going to be okay, Liv.’ Kelly laid a comforting hand on her back.
    â€˜When do you think it’ll be okay? It would be great to have a date for that.’
    Kelly’s hand moved gently up and down. ‘I don’t know but it will. You just have to hang in there.’
    She was so damn sick of hanging in. ‘Yeah, I know.’
    Kelly found her a toothbrush and Jason waited in their front sitting room to help her slide awkwardly between the sheets with her sling.
    â€˜Let me know if you need anything,’ he said from the hall doorway.
    â€˜Thanks, Pops.’
    â€˜Mr Weeks to you, young lady.’ She’d never seen him in his classroom but when he used that voice, she could imagine it – To Sir, With Love meets Principal Skinner. He flicked the light off and stood silhouetted by the glow from the hallway.
    â€˜Thanks for coming to get me tonight. I’ll have to start paying rent soon.’ She hadn’t ever slept on their sofa until the night Thomas left. Cameron had stayed on a mattress in their daughters’ room and Kelly had curled up beside her while she’d stared at the ceiling wondering what the hell had gone wrong. There’d been too many other nights since then – when she’d drunk too much to drive, when Cameron was with his father and Liv couldn’t stand being on her own.
    â€˜You could just move in,’ Jason said.
    â€˜There’s an idea.’
    â€˜Hmm.’ With the light at his back, Liv couldn’t see his face. She hoped he was smiling.
    She listened as Kelly and Jason moved about at the other end of the house. They murmured to each other as they opened and closed doors and drawers, as the hall light went out, as their bedroom went from bright to subdued. A moment later, the house was enveloped in blackness.
    Liv hadn’t been frightened of the dark as a kid. Her dad had been big and strong enough that there was no need to be afraid when he turned off the lights. He’d made sure she knew how to defend herself, so when she was all grown up, when she’d inherited his height and build, she’d never felt more than a little creeped out by