She hadn’t known about the history of abuse until the day of Oscar’s death, when he had revealed his family’s darkest secret to her and Quirke, up on Howth Head, before driving himself in Quirke’s car over a cliff into the sea.

Outside, the half-hearted rain had intensified into the real thing. On days like this when she was little, she used to love to sit by the window in her Grandfather Griffin’s house in Rathgar and watch the big drops bouncing on the tarmac. She imagined them to be tiny ballerinas making super-quick curtseys and then dropping through little trapdoors hidden in the stage.

What would happen, if Angela Lawless really was April Latimer? Quirke wouldn’t let a thing like that go, his daughter was certain of that. But what would he do? Would he tell her family? April’s uncle, William Latimer, was in the government – he would have to go down to Spain and try to get her to come back with him. If he did, and if April went with him, would all that awful stuff be raked up again? A scandal this time, of that magnitude, would not be so easy to suppress. Somehow, April’s return to life would cause a bigger commotion than her supposed death.

As Phoebe pondered these things, she was aware of a growing sense of unease, an unease tinged with, of all things, embarrassment. It was as if she had been told about her friend having done some horrible, shameful thing and then run away from the consequences.

And all this, when she was supposed to have been safely dead.

Safely.

The word brought Phoebe up short, with a guilty start. But she had to admit it, she did not want to have to deal with her friend, not now, not after all that had happened, or that she had believed to have happened. April was too much part of a painful past. Let it stay that way.

She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cold, clammy windowpane.

Poor April.

Chapter 20

She searched for a photograph with April in it. She had gone through drawers, and rummaged in the bedside chest where she kept odd bits and pieces. She was about to give up the search when she remembered the old shoebox in the wardrobe. She hadn’t looked in it in years. It was on a high shelf, and she had to stand on a chair to reach it.