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“HOLD STILL,” THE PARAMEDIC TELLS me, as he places the last butterfly stitch on the wound above my eyebrow.

I sit here wrapped in my foil blanket, squinting with pain, trying to eavesdrop on the conversations around me. Rumors swirl around me about deaths, maybe several of them.

The police are here now. I watch them moving among the groups of guests on the lawns, speaking to everyone. I don’t want to talk to them. Not yet. I can’t get my thoughts straight about what happened last night for a start. My head is agony: I have a pretty serious concussion, apparently. The last thing I really remember is seeing Francesca drive off in that silver car. Knowing I couldn’t let her get away.

Did I pass out after that? I think I must have done. Everything afterwards is a blank.

All I can think of now is my daughter. I just want to go home to her, to my baby girl. My small, safe life. But I sense it’s going to be a little while before I can do that.

I understand Cora better now. You don’t stop wanting things or wanting to cling on to an earlier version of yourself just because you’ve become a mother. All the more so, I’d imagine, if you had a child when you were still a kid yourself. We saw Cora as cool and sophisticated, and she saw us as two teenage girls who’d never imagine the responsibilities she might have at home. At that magical place—the place I once thought of as a Narnia, a Neverland—she could escape into a different world for a few hours each day.

I glance up at the crackle of a radio. Uniformed officers are everywhere you look, plus a select handful who I think must be plain clothes. My eye’s drawn to one figure in particular. A man around my own age with close-cropped hair, graying at the temples. He’s the tallest of them and seems to carry the most authority. He turns in this direction, the sunlight hits his face.

But it can’t be.