The Accident: The bestselling psychological thriller

Brian shrugs. ‘I don’t know why you’re surprised, Sue. Kids fall in and out of love all the time and they switch their friends like they’re going out of fashion. Teenagers are fickle, darling. Surely you know that?’

‘I do but …’ I place the cotton back in the bowl of water and pick up Charlotte’s hairbrush. ‘… she’d been friends with Ella since primary school and they’ve had their spats but they always made up before. And as for Liam,’ I tease the brush through Charlotte’s long dark hair, ‘she’d have done anything for him. She adored him. And I’m supposed to believe she dumped him because she’s a fickle teen? It doesn’t make sense.’

Brian turns another page of his newspaper then shuts it, folds it in two and rests it on his lap.

‘Sue …’

I continue brushing Charlotte’s hair, smoothing it down with my hands so the ends lie flat over her shoulders.

‘Sue, look at me.’

‘What?’ I don’t look up.

‘You don’t think you’re getting a bit …’ he pauses. ‘… obsessed, do you?’

‘Obsessed?’

‘With Charlotte’s accident, acting like there’s some big conspiracy when the truth is …’ he pauses again. ‘… it was just an accident. A terrible, unpreventable accident. I understand how helpless and powerless you feel – I feel exactly the same way – but giving her friends the third degree isn’t going to make her magically wake up.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I start, then fall silent. I still haven’t told him what she wrote in her diary. I nearly told him about it a couple of days ago but then he snuck out of bed at six o’clock in the morning. At first I thought he was in the toilet but when he hadn’t reappeared after half an hour I got up to look for him. He wasn’t anywhere in the house, neither was Milly. It was the second time in as many years that he’d taken her out for a walk.

Something’s going on and there’s only one person I can talk to about it.

Mum’s sitting in her favourite place, by the window in the hard-backed armchair I covered with a lovely Laura Ashley print a few years ago. She doesn’t look up when I walk into the room.

‘Hello Mum.’ I move a pile of towels and laundry onto the floor and perch on the edge of her single bed. There’s nowhere else to sit.

My mother doesn’t acknowledge me so I try a different tack. ‘Hello Elsie. How are you today?’

This time she turns around. Her forehead creases with confusion. ‘Who are you?’

My heart sinks. She doesn’t recognize me. Mum has good days and bad days. Today, it seems, is not a good day.

‘I’m Sue,’ I say. ‘Your daughter. I bought you a present.’

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