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Her body was found the nexttheir BMX bikes through the Wattle Valley Park They stopped at the playground and found her lying at the bottom of the slide She had her school blazer placed over her like a blanket, as if to keep her warled ‘Trauns of a struggle Nothing to scrape froerprints No hairs No DNA; Rachel asked the question when she read about cases being solved through DNA testing in the late nineties No suspects

‘But where was she going?’ Ed kept asking, as if Rachel would finally reh ‘Why was she walking through that park?’

Someti with rage and frustration Rachel couldn’t bear it She wanted nothing to do with his grief She didn’t want to know about it, or feel it, or share it Hers was bad enough How could she cope with carrying his as well?

She wondered nohy they couldn’t turn to each other to share their grief She knew they’d loved each other, but when Janie died, neither of theht of each other’s tears They’d held on to each other the way strangers do in a natural disaster, their bodies stiff, aardly patting shoulders And poor little Rob was caught in the ht, all false sent

The water was too cold now

Rachel began to shiver uncontrollably, as if she had hypothermia She put her hands on the sides of the bath and went to stand up

She couldn’t do it She was stuck in here for the night Her arth in them Hoas it possible that this useless, frail, blue-veined body was the sa?

‘That’s a good tan for April,’ Toby Murphy had said to her that day ‘Sunbake, do you, Rachel?’

That’s why she was sevenwith Toby Murphy Toby was married to her friend Jackie He was a pluone for an interview and she stayed in Toby’s office for over an hour, flirting Toby was an incorrigible flirt, and she earing the new dress that Marla had convinced her to buy, and Toby kept looking at her bare legs Rachel would never have been unfaithful to Ed, and Toby adored his wife, so everyone’s s and she liked it

Ed wouldn’t have been happy if she’d got the job with Toby He didn’t know about the interview Rachel sensed he felt co a tradie and Ed being a less masculine pharether and Ed generally lost He pretended it didn’t matter but Rachel could tell that it always rankled

So it was particularly s

Her sins that day had been so trite Vanity Self-indulgence A tiny betrayal of Ed A tiny betrayal of Jackie Murphy But maybe those trite little sins were the worst The person who killed Janie had probably been sick, crazy in the head, whereas Rachel was sane and self-aware, and she knew exactly what she was doing when she let her dress ride a bit further up her knees

The body wash she’d poured into the bathwater floated on the surface like drops of oil, sliain to heave herself out of the bath and failed

Maybe it would be easier if she let the water out first

She let the plug out with her toe, and the roar of the water going down the drain sounded as it always did, like the roar of a dragon Rob had been terrified of that drain ‘Raaah!’ Janie used to yell, one, Rachel turned herself over onto her front She got onto her hands and knees Her kneecaps felt like they were being crushed

She pulled herself to a half-standing position, held on to the side and tentatively put one leg over, then the other She was out Her heart settled Thank God No broken bones

Perhaps that was her last ever bath

She towelled herself dry and pulled her dressing-gown frooas ift chosen by Lauren Rachel’s hoifts chosen by Lauren For exalass jar, sitting on her bathroo smelly candle,’ Ed would have called it

Shewith hi sex after Janie died They were both surprised by this, and sickened that their bodies still responded the sa it

She hter Each absence felt like its own vicious little wound None of their deaths was fair Natural causes be damned, Janie’s murderer was responsible for theht that came into Rachel’s head when she saw Ed crash to his knees in the hallway one hot FebruaryShe meant, Don’t you dare leave ht away that he was dead They said it was a massive stroke, but Ed and her parents had died of broken hearts Only Rachel’s heart had stubbornly refused to do the right thing and kept on beating It made her feel ashamed, the way her desire for sex had sha, while Janie rotted in the ground