The woman takes a few small steps towards Ryan and crouches down.
Emilia frowns. This can’t be real. She stares at his face, her body shaking. Is this really the person who killed Sophie? Is this the man who upturned her entire world?
The woman stands, spinning around to face Emilia with a strange expression on her face. Happiness? Excitement? No … It’s anticipation. She walks towards her, her arm extended, something held out between her fingers.
‘Take it,’ the woman whispers as she reaches her. ‘There are hundreds just like it on his computer.’
Emilia reaches forward and takes it, but her stomach sinks before her mind is even able to process what is happening. As though her body knows, warning her of what is to come.
Because in her hand, grasped in her shaking fingers, is the photo of Sophie.
The same as the one that was in her first box. The photo she had never seen before. She turns to look back at her corner, to where the chain is discarded and the box is sitting there innocuously.
Her chest grows hot, fingers tingling as rage stirs, rasping in her lungs.
The photo that was inside her box is still lying there. And it’s printed on paper – a copy of an original. The original which is now in her hands. Pocked with marks. Just like the photo Ryan was holding earlier.
It’s the same one, the very same.
He had said that it was a photo of his girlfriend. She had imagined a picture of both of them, or of her smiling, laughing. Happy. The features of the girl blurred in her imagination. But all along, he was consumed by a photograph of Sophie. A photograph she didn’t know was being taken. Her little sister, Sophie.
Her name is Fiona.
Fiona. Fi. Sophie.
Rage burns inside her, a blazing fire consuming all the oxygen in the room, and her hand, the one gripping the gun, shakes violently. How many signs had she ignored or missed because of where they were and what they were going through? Why had she trusted him?
Emilia lifts her chin. She raises her arm and aims the gun to his head.