Welcome to Case Closed.

You're listening to Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney, narrated by Stephanie Racine.

Let's pick up where we left off last time.

Now, Boxing Day, December 2016, evening.

When I first start to fall, I forget to be afraid, too busy noticing that the hand that pushed me looked so much like my own. But as I plummet into

the darkness below, my worst fears follow me down. I want to scream, but I can't. That familiar hand

is now tightly clasped over my mouth. I can't make a sound. I can barely breathe. When the terror

shakes me from the recurring nightmare, I awake into another. I still don't recall what happened

to me, no matter how hard I try, no matter how badly I need to know.

People seem to come and go.

A cacophony of murmurs, strange sounds and smells.

Ill-defined shapes linger over and around me as though I am underwater, drowning in my

own mistakes. Sometimes it feels like I am underwater, drowning in my own mistakes.

Sometimes it feels like I am lying at the bottom of a murky pond,

the weight of the dirty liquid pushing down on me,

filling me up with secrets and filth.

There are moments when I think it would be a relief to drown, for it all to be over.

Nobody can see me down here, but then I was always rather invisible.

The new world around me turns in slow motion, just out of reach, while I remain perfectly still, down in the darkness.

Occasionally, I managed to resurface just long enough to focus on the sounds, to speed them up so that they become recognisable to me again, like right now.

I can hear the sound of a paper page being turned, no doubt one of the silly crime novels

he is so fond of. The others come and go, but he is always here. I am no longer alone. I wonder why he hasn't put the book down

...