Page 29 of Perfect Wives

My heart slams against my ribs.

My eyes blur.

I know what’s coming, and I can’t stop it. Can’t look away.

She pulls out a glossy photo, sealed inside a clear evidence sleeve, and slides it across the table. Panic swarms, white-hot and all-consuming. My hands shake as I reach for the photo. Inside the sleeve, the edges are slightly curled, showing its age, but the image is unmistakably me. A younger, wilder version, but it’s me.

‘Do you recognise this photo?’ Sató asks.

I nod. I can’t find my voice.

‘When was it taken?’

‘I don’t know for sure,’ I rasp.

‘A guess?’ she pushes.

I bite my lip. ‘Twelve years ago. Eleven maybe.’

It was taken only a few months before I met Nate.

I search for a mantra, something to cling to like a life raft, but there’s only this panic – a storm in my mind – and the sense of being far out to sea with no way home.

I’d like to say I haven’t seen that photo since it was taken, but I have. I saw it the day of the street party last summer when Jonny followed me into my kitchen and smiled at me, smug and knowing, and showed me what he had. A piece of my past that had the power to ruin everything. A photo of the two of us side by side, grinning at the camera.

When I lift my gaze back to Sató’s, I see it in her eyes. She knows this is my real motive. This is why I wanted Jonny Wilson dead.

9 DAYS EARLIER

Magnolia Close WhatsApp Group

Thursday, 9 October, 8.25a.m.

Andrea (No. 7)

The detective has just pulled up outside Jonny’s house.

Ryan (No. 9)

Like we know anything! Waste of time.

Cynthia (No. 1)

Do they think it was someone he knew?

Bill (No. 5)

It usually is.

Andrea (No. 7)

They don’t think it was one of us, do they?

Susie (No. 11)

If you ask me, it’s not us they should be talking to but all those women who visited him.

Andrea (No. 7)