The next couple of weeks are hellish. I even think I go a bit mad, in my own way. I don’t keep a regular sleep pattern. I only bother to shower because I find the warm flow of the water a comfort. Other than that, I barely exist. I don’t leave. I eat my cupboards bare down to the last can of long-life soup. I ignore all the calls and emails from my publisher; my agent; Moira. I can see from the subject headers how serious things are getting: people are asking questions; journalists are reaching out to me for comment; Moira is alerting me to the fact she’s terminating my employment contract. It all just washes over me. It’s white noise.
My lowest moments come in the middle of the night, when I dream of terrible things. Real things. Imagined things. Things that conflate dreams and reality. One night, after waking from a dream involving a stone maze filled with small semi-human-like creatures, each dragging a corpse of a little girl along the floor by the hair, I grapple around on my bedside table for my phone and dial my dad’s number. The call is answered after six rings, and I immediately begin sobbing. ‘I’m going to go to prison,’ I cry, fighting to catch my breath and keep it steady enough to talk. ‘I’m going to lose my flat. I’m going to lose everything.’
Silence follows for a bit. Then I hear a sigh. And that’s when I realise it’s not Dad on the other end. It’s her. Amanda.
‘You’re a vile, nasty murderer,’ she says in a cruel whisper. ‘And you deserve to go to jail.’
I fling my phone across the room away from me like it’s a grenade. I can’t work out in my dream-addled state whether the screeching cackle I hear as the phone flies away from me is real or an after-effect of my nightmare.
My phone brings me another horror the next morning; a robustly real one that signals a change to my current day-to-day existence.
I’m not sure why I answer. It may be because it is a withheld number, and curiosity gets the better of me. I press the cool, cracked glass screen to my ear and listen.
‘Am I speaking to Katherine Marchland?’ a female voice asks in a businesslike tone. ‘Formerly known as Katherine Carlson?’ I tell her she is, and she continues. ‘Ms Marchland, my name is Detective Inspector Cousins of Northumbria Police. I need to ask you to present yourself at Wickton Close Police Station, Newcastle tomorrow afternoon at 3 p.m. to be interviewed under police caution. You are not under arrest at this time, but I have to inform you that you may be liable for arrest if you fail to turn up at the appointed time. You are of course free to bring legal representation with you, or you can access legal advice through a duty solicitor if you request one to be appointed for you. Please can you confirm you have understood this information?’
By some miracle, I manage to say, faintly, ‘Yes. I do.’ She ends the call after that.