It’s dark as I stomp along the street, silently seething. I’m not even sure who I’m angry at: Dan or myself. We’ve known each other since school, even though we weren’t together then. It wasn’t long after, though. We’ve been married for nineteen years. Almost two decades of seeing each other more or less every day is such a long time. There are times where I can predict everything Dan is going to do or say – and I’d bet the same is true for him. It gets to the point where the individual has been replaced by the couple.

Familiarity does breed contempt and it’s there for both of us. It didn’t used to be like this but we got set in our ways. Growing older does that to people.

A dim orange glows from the street lights, shrouding the street in a gloomy, shadowed wash. There’s no traffic at this time of the evening, so I cross the road at the corner with barely a glance in each direction. Our road becomes another but there’s little between them, both sides lined with identikit houses and parked cars.

I stop when I reach number sixty-three, knocking on the dust-peppered white door, rather than using the adjacent bell. There’s a scuffing of feet from inside and then the door swings open, leaving me staring at a man I’ve not seen in a very long time.

His features are silhouetted by the light behind him but everything Dan said is true: he hasn’t changed that much. His nose is flat, his eyes round and far apart. There are wrinkles on his forehead, close to his temples and around his mouth – but it makes him look more rugged. I remember a boy but this is unquestionably a man.

‘Jason,’ I say.

‘Aye…’

He stands to the side, opening the door wider for me to enter. I feel him watching me as I do and, when I get into the hallway, he speaks softly.

‘Rose McNulty.’

‘That’s not my name any more.’

‘Oh.’

‘It hasn’t been for a long time.’

I step around him, unbuckling my coat in the familiarity of my surroundings.

‘Where’s Ell?’ I ask.

Jason nods towards the kitchen at the back of the house and I don’t wait for him, moving along the darkened hall and hearing the front door close.

Ellie is sitting at her kitchen table staring at the disjointed pieces of a barely started jigsaw. She looks up when I enter and then glances towards the hallway. Jason hasn’t followed and we wait, listening as his footsteps clump up the stairs.

‘I meant to tell you,’ Ellie says as I slot into the chair opposite her.

She doesn’t get up but there’s nothing unusual about that. She’s in a set of fleecy leopard-print pyjamas; the type of cosy, warm outfit in which an entire day can be spent. In Ellie’s case, it often is. Her hair is unwashed and tied back loosely into a ponytail. I doubt she’s left the house today.

‘It was all a bit last-minute,’ she adds as Jason’s footsteps become silent. ‘He needs somewhere to stay for his parole and the friend he was going to live with had a few issues. It was either here or an awkward conversation with the probation officer. I didn’t want to risk him having to stay inside, so…’

She tails off but it’s not as if she has to explain herself to me. Not really.

‘It’s fine,’ I reply.

‘Is it really?’

‘Dan said he’d seen Jason around earlier, so it’s not a complete surprise. Why would I mind?’

Ellie pouts her bottom lip and then nods. She knows why I’m here. Why I’m really here.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asks.

I hold both hands out, palms up to the sky. ‘You name it.’

She snorts in amusement but there’s nothing mean about it. Comrades on a battlefield. When all else is collapsing, what else is there to do but laugh?

‘Has Olivia said anything to you?’ I ask.

‘About what?’

‘Anything… everything. She didn’t come home last night and only texted Dan late on about it. She says Tyler is missing – but it’s not the first time. You know what they’re like. They argue, break up, make up…’ A sigh. ‘She seems happy enough doing the accounting classes with you and I wondered if she ever says anything.’

Ellie’s lips are pressed together and she doesn’t have to say anything. I hold up a hand.

‘Sorry… I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t put you in that position. It’s not fair.’

Ellie pounces on a piece of the puzzle and slots it into place with a satisfying click. I can’t remember the last time I tried a jigsaw. It must be decades.

‘She always tries hard when she’s here,’ Ellie says without looking up. ‘She’s a good kid.’

‘Are the classes going well?’

‘Well enough. She was talking about enrolling in college to do something more advanced.’

Ellie smirks as she looks up to see my wide-eyed expression.

‘She’s never said anything like that to me,’ I reply.

‘I’m sure she will in her own time.’

There’s some relief in that and, after a long day, it feels like at least some of the weight has been lifted. ‘It’s good she’s thinking of the future,’ I say.

Ellie raises her eyebrows. ‘We never did.’

‘…And look at us!’

She acknowledges the point – though she’s right, of course. We’ve known each other our entire lives. We grew up a couple of streets away from each other, went to the same schools, hung out with the same people. Here we are, in our early forties, and little has changed.

Ellie must be in the same mindset as me because she suddenly sits up rigidly. ‘Did you hear about the watermill?’ she asks.

‘What about it?’

‘They’re finally tearing it down next month.’

‘They’ve been saying that for years.’

She reaches to the side, digs into a plastic recycling tub and then pulls out the local free paper. ‘It’s in here,’ she says. ‘Sounds like it’s actually happening this time.’

As she finds the right page and shows me the headline and photo, there’s a moment in which I feel myself slipping through time. My fingertips tingle, my mouth watering at the memories. We were all kids together – well, teenagers. We’d traipse through the woods to the abandoned watermill. It’s a short distance out of town and was derelict twenty years ago. More importantly, no parents ever went there. Why would they? There was Ellie; her twin brother, Wayne; Jason, myself and – occasionally – the odd hanger-onner. Jason was a year younger than the rest of us and it was our own private play area. Ellie would climb the waterwheel while the rest of us would lay on the bank and smoke cigarettes. That was when Ellie was more active than now. Since she started doing freelance accounting from home, she rarely goes out.

We all grew out of it, of course – but there was a time when that creaky, wooden shack with a wheel on the side felt like the most important place on earth. It was certainly the centre of our worlds.

‘I can’t remember the last time I was there,’ I say.

‘Me either.’

There’s a moment where it feels as if Ellie’s going to say something, but she takes a breath instead – and then turns back to her puzzle.

Over the years, various companies or the council have announced plans to tear down the mill but it’s never happened.

‘Do you think they’ll really do it this time?’ I ask.

‘Sounds like it.’

‘I thought it would outlast all of us.’

There’s a forlorn silence and – for me at least – it feels as if I’ll be losing something personal. As if the memories will disappear along with the ramshackle building. I suspect Ellie feels it as well, even though we’ve long since moved on.

We grew up a couple of streets apart – and that’s still the case, even though it is in different houses on the opposite side of North Melbury. Ellie’s place is significantly bigger than the one in which Dan, Olivia and I live. She got a great deal from the children of an old couple who died. They wanted quick money and she wanted to move. There’s a massive basement and attic, along with three large bedrooms. She’s lived by herself for years, which is why it’s something of a surprise that Jason’s here now. She’s always seemed happier by herself.

As Ellie reaches for another puzzle piece, she gasps and rubs the back of her neck, wincing as she touches it.

‘Is that the whiplash?’ I ask.

She has one eye screwed closed as she peers up but then opens it as she stretches high. ‘I forget to take the painkillers,’ she croaks. ‘I only remember when it starts to hurt again.’

In the craziness of the past few hours, it’s only now that I remember my best friend had a car crash of her own ten days ago.

Ellie pushes herself up and crosses to the cupboard above the sink, removing a small grey box and taking out a slim white disc, which she holds up.

‘I couldn’t swallow the first pills they gave me, so the doctor rewrote the prescription for some soluble tablets. I’ve got weeks and weeks’ worth. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.’

‘Why would it be bad?’

‘He must think I’m going to be in pain for a long time.’

Ellie removes a filter jug of water from the fridge, pours herself a glass, and drops the tablet inside. She asks if I want a drink and, as I say no, the pill fizzes at the bottom of her glass, sending spirals of cloudy gas into the rest of the liquid.

‘I could probably kill myself ten times over,’ Ellie says, taking the first sip.

‘I hope you don’t.’

A smirk: ‘I’m joking.’

‘I know.’

I do know – but I wish she wouldn’t make light of it. Ellie’s had problems in the past and, though I’m clearly no doctor, there have been times I’d have called her depressed. If not clinically, then I suppose she seemed, well… sad. After everything with Wayne, with her twin, I guess it’s no surprise. This isolation of rarely leaving the house all feeds into that.

Ellie touches her ribs and then rubs her neck once more, before sitting back down. ‘I had to pay five hundred on the excess to get the car into the garage,’ she says. ‘I’ve still got a rental to get around. I think they’re going to write mine off.’

‘Have you heard anything from the police?’

She starts to shake her head – and then stops herself. ‘You’d think they’d have something. He was on the wrong side of the road but they keep going on about number plate cameras, lack of evidence and all that. I didn’t get the number plate – I was too busy trying not to get killed. I accidentally said I wasn’t even a hundred per cent sure of the colour, whether it was blue or black, so I think that’s working against me.’

‘Didn’t any witnesses come forward after it was in the paper?’

‘I’m not that lucky.’

Ellie’s crash was very different from mine, or I assume it was. I’m still not too clear what happened with me. Hers happened on the High Street. Someone veered onto the wrong side of the road, she swerved to avoid a collision, mounted a kerb and cannoned into a lamp post, narrowly avoiding a smash with the front of the hairdressers’ shop. The image of the street light bent horizontal was on the front page of the weekly local paper.

We’ve not seen one another for a week or so and talk for a while about what’s been going on. It’s all surface fluff, however. Even more than usual, it doesn’t sound like Ellie’s been out much since her accident. She got her groceries delivered this week.

As well as the accounting, she’s taught herself website design. Anything that means she can be in the house. She never had any interest in maths or technology when we were at school but she’s been doing these jobs for a while now. She learned much of the accounting from her father. I sometimes wonder what our teenage selves would think of us now. It was all music, ciggies and bunking off back then. Now it’s white-collar jobs and mortgages.

I don’t tell her about waking up in the field, or the blood. The more time passes – and I realise it’s not even a full twenty-four hours yet – the more it feels like something I imagined. I remember it through a blurry haze, not clear and crisp like real life.

‘We might have had a break-in,’ I say, finally remembering why I came here.

Ellie looks up, concerned: ‘A break-in?’

‘Someone put through the window of our back door. It was unlocked but the key was still in the drawer. We don’t know if anyone actually got inside.’

‘Did they take anything?’

‘Possibly fifty quid from the kitchen drawer but, other than that, nothing. I can’t be certain they took the money, either. It might have been Liv. She hadn’t got home from work when I left.’

Ellie scrunches up her face in confusion and then glances at her own back door. ‘What would be the point of all that if they didn’t take anything?’

‘No idea. Perhaps they were distracted by a noise from next door, something like that?’

‘What did the police say?’

‘Not much. Gave me a crime reference number. I think it’s because I said nothing had been taken. I didn’t notice the money then. Dan reckons it was kids with a ball. He says he always locks the back door but I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave it unlocked.’

Ellie raises her eyebrows, illustrating the scepticism that I had. We’ve talked about Dan a lot in the past few years. I wouldn’t say I tell her everything – but I share a lot. It’s that, or drive myself crazy.

‘We might have to get the locks changed,’ I add. ‘I was figuring out who had keys for the house – and all I could come up with was Dan, me, Liv, the spare one in the kitchen, and you.’

Ellie glances across to her fridge. There’s a small whiteboard pinned to the front with a shopping list written in neat capital letters. Next to that is a row of magnetised hooks, with keys hanging from each.

‘I don’t suppose someone could have used your spare key…?’

I’ve already said it before I’ve thought too much about the words. It’s been in my mind since Dan said he’d seen Jason on the street. Perhaps someone simply let themselves into the house and the broken glass is there to confuse us. Nothing was taken but maybe that wasn’t the aim of whoever broke in.

Ellie knows what I mean straight away. Her lips twitch as she takes a second or two to think of her response. I know she’s holding back.

‘You mean Jason,’ she says.

‘That’s not what I mean,’ I reply, hoping the lie isn’t too obvious. Of course I mean him.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know…’

Ellie could force the point, turn this into an argument, but she’s too diplomatic for that. She has more patience than me. ‘Are you sure there isn’t another key?’ she asks. ‘Hidden under a flower pot or something?’

‘Dan’s really funny about that sort of thing. I locked myself out once and he made me wait until he was home from work. He didn’t even leave early. I thought about breaking a window but didn’t...’

Ellie shrugs and then winces from another twinge. It’s not long after that I say I have to go. It’s a little after nine and Olivia is due home from work. I wasn’t joking when I said her father and I needed a word with her, even if she wasn’t there to hear it.

Ellie and I hug softly – she says she’s still a little fragile – and then I head back to the hallway. I’m about to open the front door when I notice the unopened letter sitting on the small table close to the exit. It’s perfectly normal – white, with a plastic window – but it’s the name that grabs my attention.

It’s for Jason Leveson – and, even though I’ve now seen him for myself, the two words somehow feel more powerful. It all feels real.

Jason Leveson: A walking, talking, living, breathing reminder of the worst thing I ever did.