Pip grabbed the clear bag of the remaining Rohypnol pills first; she didn’t like the way they were looking at her, and she didn’t trust herself around them. She grabbed a small handful of cut-up material too and, treading quietly, she walked across to the bathroom, closed the door, lowered her hands into the toilet bowl and dropped it all in.

She flushed, and watched it disappear, the pills the last thing to be sucked away by the whirlpool. Her family shouldn’t wake; they slept like the dead. And the flush was quiet, especially with the bathroom door shut.

The toilet bowl refilled as normal. Good. She shouldn’t try to push it, keep it to a small handful each time, and leave several minutes between every flush, so there was no build up anywhere in the pipes.

Pip quickly worked it out in her head. She had this toilet here, in the upstairs family bathroom, and the one downstairs near the front door. Two toilets, small handfuls, that large pile of evidence. This was going to take a while. But she had to be done before her family woke up. On the flip side, she couldn’t let her exhaustion make her rush, take too much at a time and cause a blockage in the pipes.

Pip went back for a second handful, sharing it between her cupped hands as she crept down the stairs – skipped the third step – and flushed it down the toilet.

Alternating trips, to the bathroom, and to the downstairs toilet, leaving enough time between each to refill. Doubting herself every time she flushed, that brief second of panic where it seemed like the toilet wasn’t refilling and oh shit she must have blocked it, she was finished, it was over, but the water always came back.

She wondered if the fire service had called the police in as soon as they saw the burned-out car and smelled the accelerant. It was a clear case of arson. Or would they wait, until they had the fire under control, and could see the bloody concrete floor in the ruined building?

Another handful. Another flush. Pip resting her mind in the repetition, just letting her hands do all the work for her, all the thinking. Up and down, to the pile and out.

At 6 a.m., her mind stirred back to life behind her dried-out eyes, wondering if the police were now just arriving at the smoky scene, nodding as the firefighters pointed out the obvious signs of foul play. It was clear someone had been badly hurt here, maybe even killed. Look at that hammer, we think that might have been the weapon. Were they starting their searches of the surrounding area? It wouldn’t take long for them to find the tarp, and the dead man inside it.

Would a detective be called to the scene then? Would it be DI Hawkins, disturbed from his Sunday lie-in, pulling on his dark green jacket while he made a call to the crime scene technicians and told them to meet him there right away?

Down the stairs. Flush. Up the stairs. Handful.

‘Secure the crime scene,’ Hawkins would be barking, the too-early morning chill biting at his face and his eyes. ‘Where’s the ME? No one else go near the body until I have photographs and a cast of those footwear impressions.’

Flush.

Time had positioned itself, halfway between six and seven. The medical examiner should be at the scene now, wearing a forensic plastic suit. Which would they do first? Take the temperature of the body? Feel his muscles for the state of rigor? Press their thumb into the skin of Jason’s back to see if the skin discolouration was still blanchable? Warm, stiff, blanchable; Pip repeated it in her head like a mantra. Warm. Stiff. Blanchable.

Were they right now, at this very second, doing those tests, working out the possible time frame in which this man died? Making initial observations, taking photographs? Hawkins watching it all from a distance. Was it happening now? Ten miles away and the person it all came down to, the one who decided whether Pip got to live or whether she didn’t.

Down the stairs. Flush.

Had they worked out who the dead man was yet? DI Hawkins knew him – acquaintances, maybe even friends – he should recognize his face. When would he tell Dawn Bell? When would he call Becca?

Pip’s fingers scrabbled against the clear plastic bag on the carpet. This was it, there were just four pieces left. One that looked like it was once part of her leggings, two pieces of latex glove and a swatch of her hoodie.

Pip straightened up and took a ceremonial breath before she flushed, watching that very last swirl of the water, taking everything away, disappearing it.

It was all gone.

It had never happened.

Pip stripped off her clothes and showered again. There was nothing on her skin, but it still felt unclean, marked in some way. She put her black hoodie and leggings at the top of her wash basket; there shouldn’t be anything incriminating on them, but she would still wash them on high, to be sure.

She pulled on a pair of pyjamas and rolled herself up in her duvet, shivering beneath it.

She couldn’t close her eyes. It was all she wanted to do, but she knew she couldn’t, because any second now...

Pip heard the sounds of the alarm from her parents’ bedroom, that squawking birdsong that was meant to be gentle, but it wasn’t because her mum had the volume on her phone too loud. Pip thought it sounded like the end of the world, a swarm of headless pigeons throwing themselves against the window.

It was 7:45 a.m. Far too early for a Sunday. But Pip’s parents had promised to take Joshua to Legoland.

Pip would not be going to Legoland.

She couldn’t, because she’d spent all night throwing up and sitting on the toilet. Alternating between the two as her stomach cramped and shuddered. Flushing a hundred times and ending up right back there, leaning over the toilet. That’s why the bucket from the bin was in her room, why it smelled of bleach. She’d tried to drown the vomit smell out of it.

Pip heard murmuring down the hall, as her mum woke up Josh, a small yap of excitement from him as he remembered the reason for the early morning. Voices back and forth, the sound of her dad rolling out of bed, that loud sigh he did as he stretched.

A gentle rap of knuckles on Pip’s door.

‘Come in,’ Pip said, her voice scratchy and foul. She didn’t even need to try to sound ill; she sounded broken. Was she broken? She thought she already had been before the longest day had begun.

Her mum poked her head inside, and her face wrinkled up immediately.

‘Smells like bleach in here,’ she said, confused, her eyes circling the bucket positioned by Pip’s bed. ‘Oh no, darling, have you been unwell? Josh said he heard the toilet flushing throughout the night.’

‘Been puking since about 2 a.m.,’ Pip sniffed. ‘And the other thing. Sorry, I was trying not to wake anyone. Brought the bucket in here but it smelled like sick so I cleaned it with toilet bleach.’

‘Oh no, sweetie.’ Her mum came over to sit on her bed, pressed the back of her hand against Pip’s forehead.

Pip almost broke right there and then, at her touch. At the devastating normality of this scene. At a mother who didn’t know how close she’d come to losing her daughter. And maybe she still would, if the plan went wrong, if the numbers the medical examiner was telling Hawkins right now weren’t what she needed them to be. If she’d overlooked something that the autopsy would find.

‘You do feel warm. You think it’s a bug?’ she said, her voice as soft as her touch, and Pip was so glad to be alive to hear it again.

‘Maybe. Or maybe something I ate.’

‘What did you eat?’