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it went round and round the turntable. I lifted the stylus and put it back on its rest. The window was wide open and there was, for the first time that day, a slight shift in the breeze, a hint of cool to relieve the unrelenting burning heat, as the evening slowly began to colour the sky with a softness that would deepen into night.
    Downstairs, Dee had put on a Joan Baez record, folk songs that Joe and I hated. We both rolled our eyes.
    â€˜How’s Kate?’ I asked, remembering her fainting that morning and then the way she’d stared Lyndon down that afternoon, shoulders square as she’d faced him on the rock ledge.
    But Joe didn’t want to talk any more. The moments in which he let me into his life were rare and they were always brief.
    â€˜Upset,’ he replied and it was all he was going to say. He put Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven on, the build of the music competing with the whining of Joan Baez downstairs, until eventually I couldn’t stand it any more and I put on my own record in my room – Cat Stevens singing Sad Lisa – as loud as everyone else in the house.
    Later that evening, when Tom came home, Dee sat us all down and said we needed to talk about Amanda.
    She took Joe’s hand in her own and surprisingly he didn’t try to pull away. ‘What has happened is terrible, and if there is anything – anything at all – that you know, you should tell us. We won’t be angry.’
    With his eyes fixed on the table, my brother kept jiggling his leg up and down, up and down.
    â€˜Roxie and Max must be a mess.’ Dee turned to Tom. ‘I don’t know what we should do – whether we should go round there, or call, or drop in a card, or flowers?’ She ran her hand through her hair.
    Tom told her flowers sounded like the best idea and then he too turned to Joe.
    â€˜It’s important. You, too.’
    He looked at me and I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders, then, unable to stop myself, I started to cry, an image of Amanda facedown in that river seeping like a darkness through me.
    â€˜I’m all right,’ I pushed Dee away, but she didn’t remove her arm.
    I picked Sammy up and held her tight, her soft brown hair knotted between my fingers, and her body warm in my lap. ‘Was she murdered?’ And then I finally managed to ask the question I’d been wanting to ask, although I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know the answer. ‘Was it one of you guys?’
    Joe looked horrified. He pushed his chair back, the legs scraping against the slate floor. ‘How could you think that?’
    I told him I was sorry. I didn’t really think that, but there were so many rumours.
    â€˜Like what?’ he demanded.
    â€˜Nothing.’ I knew I was turning all that I had heard into one big ugly accusation. ‘It was just when the police called you all in...’
    Tom told us to both calm down. ‘No one thinks you or any of your friends did anything. And what happened with the police was wrong. They shouldn’t have talked to you without a parent or lawyer present.’
    â€˜Lyndon wanted a lawyer.’ I spoke softly, aware that Joe was still glaring at me.
    â€˜How do you know?’ he asked.
    â€˜Sonia said that Sal had said.’
    â€˜If he did want a lawyer, he was quite within his rights,’ Tom intervened. ‘Don’t go jumping to conclusions.’ He began to clear the dinner plates, stacking them in an ordered pile next to the morning’s dirty plates and bowls, still waiting to be washed. ‘Whose turn?’
    Both Joe and I pointed at each other.
    Tom threw the tea towel at me and the rubber gloves at Joe.
    â€˜How come you don’t do anything?’ I asked. ‘Why is it always the women and the children?’
    Tom folded his arms. ‘I’ve been working all day.’
    â€˜So have we.’ I could see his scepticism. ‘At school.’ And I