The Night Olivia Fell. Christina McDonald

I assumed was meant to be a smile. He looked as exhausted and unkempt as usual, but this time there was something else I hadn’t noticed before: an unmistakable edge of animosity.

      ‘If I could just borrow Detective Samson for a minute.’

      Samson carefully folded the printed pages and slipped them into her blazer pocket, along with Olivia’s phone and her notebook. The door closed with a sharp snap behind her.

      I sat on one of the metal chairs and watched them through the slats of the cheap metal blinds. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. McNally was speaking forcefully to Samson. He looked angry. Samson gestured with both hands, more animated than normal. She lifted Olivia’s phone, but he shook his head and batted it away. Samson glanced at me, gave me a small tight smile, but something tilted inside of me when I saw it. I felt a sense of foreboding. Of time running out.

      And right then I knew, with a dark certainty, that if I left it to them, I would never know the truth about what had happened to Olivia.

      I’d spent my whole life hiding, just existing behind the walls I’d built around myself. I never got the answers I needed when my mother died. I was powerless to stop my mom killing herself. Powerless to make Olivia’s father choose me. Powerless to stop my daughter from – the pain of reality hit me in the stomach.

      But I couldn’t afford to feel that way now. Self-pity was fine when you were ten, but in a few months I’d have Olivia’s baby to take care of. Wallowing was an indulgence I didn’t have. I needed answers now.

      What do you do when you know something and nobody will listen? When you need answers and nobody will provide them? When you can’t trust anybody to help you?

      I stood at a crossroads, half aware that my choice now would send me down a path from which there would be no turning back. The decision wasn’t a hard one. I didn’t want to be powerless anymore. I wanted answers.

      I slammed the interview room door open, and Samson and McNally turned to me, eyes wide with surprise.

      ‘Something’s wrong,’ I said, a crazed fury surging through my body. Rage had hijacked the rational part of my brain, the part that never stood up to people, that sat back while others told me what to do. ‘I know something’s wrong. And you both know it. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out what happened to my daughter.’