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moment. Sam looked at his phone.
    ‘Is this to do with Libby?’ Ellie said.
    He picked up his phone and tried to call her again. Still no answer. He nodded as he threw the phone on to the bed.
    ‘Were you protecting her?’ Ellie said.
    Sam hesitated. ‘I was trying to.’
    Just then the front door opened downstairs. Ben was home. Sam tensed up at the sound and Ellie put her hands out to placate him.
    ‘It’s just my husband,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t know you’re here, doesn’t know anything about this.’
    A voice from downstairs. ‘Ellie?’
    Ellie walked across the room, placed her hand on the door handle. ‘Stay in here, it’s safe. I’ll go and speak to him. I won’t tell him about you.’ She looked at the floor. ‘Don’t walk about or we’ll hear you downstairs.’
    She opened the door, looking at Sam. ‘OK?’
    ‘OK.’

8
    Ben spoke as she entered the kitchen.
    ‘Something’s happened.’
    He’d already flipped open the laptop on the table and was typing in their password.
    Logan1.
    Ellie’s hands had typed that password into countless computers and online accounts over the years, she could hit the sequence of keys every time at speed without thinking or looking. A muscle memory, completely subconscious. If she slowed down to think about it, it felt clumsy and awkward, and she would get it wrong. Like glimpsing something in the corner of your eye that disappeared if you tried to look at it directly.
    Ben fired up Twitter. He was much more internet savvy than she was, all that time in obscure conspiracy chatrooms and the like. Ellie thought about Logan’s Facebook page, felt a familiar itch to check in and see if anyone had posted anything. Then she thought about Sam upstairs. When she got a moment she would look him up on Facebook, his sister too, find out all about his life, family, friends, whatever it was that had brought him to her. She looked at the ceiling. How many inches away were his feet? The ceiling was covered in grease and cooking stains, cobwebs strung across the corners. Who ever cleaned their kitchen ceiling?
    Ben was typing away. Ellie didn’t do Twitter, didn’t understand the appeal. Just lots of celebrities showing off, and angry, lonely people shouting into the void. Every second news story these days was about people being abusive on Twitter, misogyny, racism, all the bitter bile of humanity in one handy place.
    ‘What’s happened?’ she said.
    ‘There’s police everywhere,’ Ben said.
    She looked over his shoulder.
    He typed in: ‘Why are there police all over South Queensferry?’
    Then he searched #queensferry #police.
    He turned to her. ‘I was flyering up The Loan when three cop cars went bombing past, sirens and lights on. By the time I got to Kirkliston Road one of them was parked across Viewforth Place blocking the street. I spoke to the officer but he wouldn’t tell me anything, just that there was an incident and they’d cordoned off the area. So I went round the back way, but Loch Place and Lovers Lane were blocked too. That means about ten streets are closed. That’s some incident.’
    He didn’t wait for a reaction from her, but turned back to the laptop, his conspiracy brain kicking in. Before the jump, Ben had not exactly been a passive acceptor of authority, but since Logan died he didn’t trust anything that anyone in power told him. Watching the news, he provided a running commentary on the lies they were being told and why it was exactly what they wanted you to think, how big corporations or government or the police were covering up dark secrets, misdirecting public attention, treating us like idiots. Ellie had some sympathy for the point of view but he’d gone too deep. You had to trust someone or something at some point, didn’t you, or else how do you go about living in a society? Of course, how you went about living was a question she hadn’t yet found her own answer to.
    Ben pointed at the screen. ‘Look at this.’
    He