66

Izzy stands there, her whole body buzzing with shock. It was him. He killed her mother.

The hall is huge but empty. Izzy looks at the floor. It used to be scattered with boys’ trainers and school bags, but there’s nothing now.

The only sign he’s ever had a family is a framed black-and-white photograph above a corner table by the door. Pip. There he is. She takes a step closer; she can’t help herself. He has lines around his eyes. A receding hairline. The man who ghosted her when her mother died.

‘I don’t care any more,’ Steve says, standing at the end of the hallway. He turns away from them, his frame heavy underneath his too-small T-shirt, and leads them into his kitchen, though Izzy knows exactly where it is, knows to step down and turn to the left as they enter.

They sit at the table. Izzy can see Pip’s old annex out in the garden. She can’t stop looking at it.

Steve seems to dither over offering them a drink, then sits with them instead, his hands empty. ‘I want to tell you everything,’ he says. He runs a hand though his hair. It used to be dark, where Pip’s was golden, but now it’s almost all white, like her father’s. ‘I don’t care what happens to me.’

‘It was you,’ Izzy says, unable to stop looking at him. ‘And you let me think it was my dad.’

Steve had been looking at her intently but, at that, his gaze slides down to the table. He says nothing for a few minutes. ‘Pip really loved you, you know,’ he says.

More memories. Watching movies in the snug together. Steve making cinnamon hot chocolate, with far too much spice in. It had been disgusting. ‘Who’s going to tell him?’ Pip had said, and they’d all laughed.

And then, without saying anything else, Steve leans forward, puts his head in his hands and cries. His back shakes, his elbows rattle the wobbly table. A spoon falls from its perch across a sugar bowl and on to the surface.

Izzy watches him, not sure what to say. Her father’s hands are knotted together, she notices, the bones showing.

Steve lets out a kind of frustrated sigh, almost a shout. ‘I knew this would come,’ he says. ‘I knew you’d come. I’m relieved you’re here. I have been in prison, just like you,’ Steve says, a kind of manic elation in his voice. ‘Waiting for this to happen.’

‘What happened?’ Gabe says. His tone is short, that clipped tone he sometimes uses. He’s sitting straight, still with his Matalan coat on, staring at Steve, who opens his mouth and begins to speak.

Haltingly, hesitantly at first.

And then louder, and clearer.

‘I never meant to kill her,’ he begins.