It was obvious why Jamie was home late from work that evening. He stumbled into the house at around 8.15, falling into the hallway and sending Tom’s bike clattering to the tiled floor with a noise that would have woken the others if they hadn’t still been up. They had been allowed to return to the house that afternoon. Leah was in the makeshift dining room, a narrow space that was a thoroughfare between the kitchen at the back of the house and the long hallway. It was barely wide enough for the table she was sitting at, but she didn’t like to eat upstairs and the living room was always taken over by Tom, who was usually watching TV while wearing little more than a pair of boxers.

He was in there now, sprawled on the sofa in front of some mind-numbing crap that Leah would only sit through if someone paid her for her wasted time. She was trying to make a plan. A long fourteen weeks lay ahead of her, quiet time in which she wouldn’t have the distractions of her university course or anything else. Or at least so she’d thought. After what had happened, it was difficult to focus on anything else.

She was determined, now more than ever, to do something productive. Everything suddenly seemed even more urgent. More fragile. She didn’t want to waste the time she had. Life was precious – social media was always reminding her as much: Seize the moment, Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present, and all those other crappy, supposedly motivational quotations that filled her newsfeed every time she caught up with the internet. They had a point, she supposed, no matter how simpering some of them were in their execution.

And planning was keeping her mind from the memory of Keira’s body lying lifeless on the patio slabs in the yard. It was keeping the echoes of that scream at bay.

‘Jesus Christ, watch it.’

Leah leaned back in her chair to look through the open dining room door and down the hallway. Tom had emerged from the living room – for once, he’d been considerate enough to put on a T-shirt – and was assessing the damage to his bike. At his side, Jamie was propping himself up with a shoulder against the wall and eyeing Tom with a silent, simmering contempt.

‘You know something, don’t you?’

At the sound of Jamie’s words, Leah pushed back her chair and headed out into the hall. Tom had rested his bike back against the wall and was trying to go back into the living room, but Jamie was blocking the doorway.

‘You’re drunk, Jay,’ Tom said. ‘Get out of the way.’

Jamie’s face was pink, flushed with alcohol. He was a terrible drinker. The others had found out not long after he’d moved in that just a couple of drinks was enough to send him silly, and too many could prove disastrous, which had happened on several occasions. He’d had a pretty sheltered background from what Leah knew of him: strict parents who had made a point of never allowing him to get away with normal teenage antics and had been keen for him to follow in the family farming business, regardless of what he wanted to do with his own life. He’d moved from Carmarthen to South Wales in an attempt to get away from them, but it seemed to everyone else that independence was something Jamie struggled with.

‘Get your fucking hands off me,’ he said now, as Tom tried to push him aside from the living room doorway.

‘Jamie, come on. I’ll make you a cuppa.’ Leah looked at him imploringly, not wanting the scene to escalate. There were tears in Jamie’s eyes.

‘Why did the police want to speak to you about Keira?’ he asked, still looking at Tom.

Tom’s sigh was audible. ‘They spoke to everyone. That’s what they do.’

‘You were in there longer than the rest of us. Why?’ Jamie’s voice was shaking, tripping across the words. For a moment, Leah felt almost sorry for him.

‘For fuck’s sake, just leave it.’ Tom barged Jamie with his shoulder, but didn’t expect the retaliation that met him. Jamie was tall and strong, but Leah had never seen him use his size to particular effect before. The first blow hit Tom in the stomach, winding him. He staggered and stumbled back out into the hallway, falling into Leah. She knew it wouldn’t end there. There was no way Tom was going to take a punch without fighting back, if only for the sake of defending his wounded pride. Regaining his balance, he lunged at Jamie.

Leah moved between them, but her efforts to put an end to the fight before it got started were rewarded with a punch, meant for Tom, to the side of her face. She was momentarily numbed, as though her head had been submerged in ice; almost as though there was no feeling at all. It didn’t last long: within seconds, a searing, burning sensation was setting fire to her skin. She put a hand to her cheek, pressing lightly. She could already feel it bruising.

Jamie seemed to sober up immediately. ‘God, Leah, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean …’

She raised a hand to him, accepting his apology. She didn’t blame him; she blamed Tom. He was always trying to stir up trouble; always trying to goad Jamie. Even now, her face swelling and her expression betraying obvious pain, he was standing there smirking, oblivious to everything but yet another opportunity to belittle his housemate.

‘Nice one, Jay,’ he said. ‘Punching girls. Tell you what, you want to be careful when the police show up looking for you. They’ll have you down as prime suspect.’

Jamie’s face twisted into a grimace. Leah had never seen him like this, so pent up, so aggressive. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Tom. Jamie had a point: what had the police wanted to speak to Tom about? Yes, they’d spoken to all of them, but neither she nor Jamie had been kept as long as Tom had. Leah had never trusted him. Now she was beginning to wonder whether she was safe under the same roof.

She put a hand on Jamie’s arm, ignoring Tom. ‘Go to the kitchen. Please. I’ll be there in a second.’

Jamie peeled his eyes from Tom, mumbled something beneath his breath and headed down the hallway and into the dining room, leaving Leah and Tom alone in the hallway.

‘How can you stand there smirking after what’s happened?’ she said.

‘Look at you, doing your best friend act,’ he replied with a sneer.

Leah looked him up and down, her expression laced with contempt. For a moment she felt like blurting out what the police had told her that afternoon. Tom hadn’t mentioned it, so she doubted he knew. If he had known, he would have used it as yet another way to wind Jamie up. She decided to save it, storing the information for a time when it could do the greatest damage. If anyone deserved it, it was Tom.

‘You slept with her, didn’t you?’

Tom said nothing.

‘Was it just to get at him?’ Leah gestured towards the door through which Jamie had disappeared. When she didn’t get an answer, she took her assumption as accurate. ‘I think we all need a break from each other. When are you going home?’

‘Wednesday,’ Tom said. He pushed past her and headed up the stairs, leaving Leah in the hallway staring at the empty space his arrogance had moments earlier filled.

As far as she was concerned, Wednesday couldn’t come quickly enough.

She made her way back through the dining room to the kitchen, where Jamie was waiting as instructed. He cut a pathetic sight, she thought, his pale blue eyes blurry with the weight of alcohol and his blond hair a mess, as though he’d just got out of bed rather than having just arrived home. His work clothes were creased; his shirt was hanging out from his trousers and was buttoned up wrong, making him look like a schoolboy who still needed his mum to dress him in the morning.

‘I am so sorry,’ he slurred.

Leah shook away the apology, although the heat in her face was still burning like a flame. ‘It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘I can’t get my head around what’s happened.’ Jamie stumbled to the sink and reached for a glass from the draining board. He filled it with cold water from the tap and drained it in a series of noisy gulps.

‘I know. None of us can.’

‘He doesn’t seem too bothered.’

‘Ignore him. He’s not as cool and calm as he likes people to think. Anyway, he’ll be gone in a couple of days.’

Jamie turned back to her, using the worktop to steady himself. ‘Just you and me, then.’

Leah watched him for a moment, uncertain whether this was a good or a bad thing. ‘Just you and me.’

They heard the sound of Tom’s footsteps hurrying back down the stairs; moments later, there was the slam of the front door as he left the house.

Jamie finished his water and put the glass into the sink. ‘How come you’re not going home for the summer?’

Leah shrugged. ‘Not much to go home for. Anyway … you should probably go to bed. Try to get some sleep … things will look better in the morning.’

Even to her own ears, her words sounded hollow. Nothing ever looked better in the morning. In Leah’s experience, things only ever looked worse.