‘It was devastating.’ Her voice was faint. ‘We—Freya and I—had such wonderful plans, to work together with our horses. We were both so excited. It had been agony being away from her, from all three of them. But I’d stayed strong because I knew better times were coming. Then I discovered that the end of her schooling meant she’d be more gone from me than ever.’

‘So you fell off your horse.’

Startled, she said, ‘Are you suggesting I did it on purpose?’

‘Did you? Put it another way. You’d waited a long time to have a proper relationship with your daughter, only to discover that that special mother–daughter time you’d been yearning for was never going to happen. You felt…?’

‘Desolate.’

‘Then you fell from your horse. I don’t doubt that you were in a lot of physical pain. But the drugs they offered you were old friends. You knew they would numb your anguish about Freya. There were many ways of relieving the agony of the broken bone. But only one way to muffle your loss about Freya.’ I shrugged. ‘Heroin.’

Dennis actually gasped. In fairness, though, they were all awestruck, thinking I was some sort of a witch.

‘So it’s Eden’s fault?’ Bronte asked.

‘You’re the one who takes heroin.’

‘But Eden’s so—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘High and mighty?’ Dennis offered. ‘Bossy?’

‘Autocratic?’ Chalkie said. ‘Overbearing? Dictatorial? A pain in the hole?’

‘I thought he was lovely,’ Ella murmured, giving Bronte a poisonous look.

‘Enough,’ I said. ‘This isn’t about him.’

‘Ah, Rachel, I was enjoying that,’ Chalkie said.

Eden Tollemarche did seem like quite the tyrant, but the Cloisters wasn’t a reinvention heaven where under-the-thumb women came to get their groove back. Bronte could sort out her marriage further down the line—or maybe not, who knew?—but, much as I would have loved to wade in there and give her all sorts of life advice, my only job was to help her to get—and crucially, stay—clean.

60

When I switched my phone on, it beeped: a missed call from Luke, then a terse two-word text: Call me.

My stomach fell down a well.

He answered after half a ring. ‘I need to see you. We need to talk.’

‘…About what?’

‘Something we have to get straight.’ His voice was calm, measured, furious. ‘On Sunday, at the beach, you said I left you, but that’s not how it was—’

Stunned, I said, ‘You absolutely did. You hired a van, packed your stuff, moved to Denver—’

‘Rachel, you left me.’

‘Luke, are you…okay?’ I was confused. ‘You sound a bit…’

‘You were already long gone,’ he said. ‘You and your sleeping tablets. Off in a place where I couldn’t reach you.’