There are so many unanswered questions keeping me awake at night. Insomnia has become a bad habit I can’t break. Every day seems to start backwards – I wake up tired and go to bed feeling wide awake. It isn’t the guilt about killing Rachel – it started long before that, and nothing I do seems to help. The sleeping pills the doctor gave me are a waste of time, and I get terrible headaches if I take them with alcohol, which of course I find hard not to do. Wine is always the most reliable crutch when it feels like I might fall.

I do my best to completely avoid doctors if I can. Hospitals are filthy places, and no amount of sanitiser, or handwashing, ever seems to remove the stench of illness and death from my skin after visiting one. Medical establishments are filled with germs and judgement, and I find the people who work in them always ask the same questions, so I always give the same answers: no, I’ve never smoked and yes, I do drink, but in moderation.

There is no law I know of saying that you have to tell your doctor the truth.

Besides, lies told often enough can start to sound true.

My mind tends to wander most when I am in the car, but that’s nothing new, I have always been prone to daydreaming. Not that I’m a danger to myself or others in that regard. I’m a very safe driver, I just do it on autopilot sometimes, that’s all. The roads are mostly empty around here anyway. I wonder if that will change now? It will initially, of course – the police, the media circus – but I wonder what will happen afterwards. When the show is over and all the… mess has been cleared away. Life will surely return to normal for most of the locals. Not those directly affected, of course, but grief is always sharpest at the point of impact. I wonder whether the coachloads of tourists will still come to visit in the summer months? No bad thing if they don’t, if you ask me. Popularity can spoil a place just like it can spoil a person.

I don’t worry about my lack of remorse, but I do question what it means. I wonder whether I am fundamentally a different person from the one I was before I killed her. People still seem to look at me the same way they did yesterday, and when I stare in the mirror, I can’t see any obvious change.

But then maybe that’s because it wasn’t really my first time.

I’ve killed before.

I bury the memory of what I did that night because it still hurts too much, even now. One wrong decision resulted in two ruined lives, not that anyone ever knew what really happened. I never told a soul. I’m sure plenty of people could understand my reasons for killing Rachel Hopkins if they knew the truth about her – some might even thank me – but nobody would ever understand why I killed someone I loved so much.

And they never will because I’ll never tell them.