Two Little Girls: The gripping new psychological thriller you need to read in summer 2018. Kate Medina

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       13

      ‘Marilyn told me about the Reynolds case,’ Callan said, slumping down on the sofa next to Jessie, coffee in hand. ‘The murder of that first little girl.’

      She glanced over and met his gaze. ‘Zoe, you mean? When did he tell you about it?’

      She had been watching News 24 for the past three hours, since four a.m., unable to sleep at all last night, a fact she wasn’t about to share with Callan. She had risen six more times during the night to straighten the curtains, seven times in all, sliding her feet softly heel to toe on the carpet as she crossed the bedroom so as not to wake him, to avoid the inevitable, impossible explanations if he caught her. She had spent the rest of the night lying on her side, watching him sleep, feeling unbelievably lucky that she could call him hers, but desperately insecure at the same time at how her tenuous grip on normality might wreck what they had. He only had so much patience and she knew that, though he professed to understand her OCD, there was no way that he did, or could.

      She had watched five half-hourly cycles of ‘The West Wittering child murder’, as the press were calling it, clearly at a loss for a snappier title. The little girl had been named an hour ago as Jodie Trigg, the last news update featuring footage of the press clamouring at the closed door of a static caravan, a uniformed police constable guarding it, trying to keep them at bay, kids in pyjamas jumping up and down in the background, trying to get their faces on television, their parents looking more suitably sombre.

      ‘He visited me in hospital last December while you were in the Persian Gulf and unburdened his soul. He probably thought I was too drugged up to remember.’

      ‘What did he say?’ She tried to sound nonchalant.

      ‘That she keeps him awake at night.’

      ‘Zoe?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘That he was certain her mother murdered her.’

      ‘She was acquitted,’ Jessie said.

      ‘Due to lack of evidence.’

      ‘She was still acquitted.’

      Callan frowned. ‘It’s not the same as being found innocent by a jury, as you well know.’

      Jessie took the opportunity of the story cycling around again to break eye contact. Marilyn this time, exiting the police station, looking as rough as Jessie felt. His tie was crooked and his black suit – did he have any others, or was there a row of identical suits hanging in his wardrobe? – was crumpled. He raised his hands and the press pack fell silent.

      ‘You need to tell Marilyn that you know where Zoe’s mother is now living and what she’s calling herself,’ Callan said.

      Jessie kept her gaze focused on the screen. ‘I’m sure he already knows,’ she said dismissively, as she heard Marilyn, clear as a bell, asking Carolynn and Roger Reynolds to get in touch with him as a matter of urgency.