“Oh that? When I saw the men at my work, I hid in a shop, one of those tourist shops. In the end I had to get something. So I bought it, then I got pissed and took a lighter to it. Reliving the past, you might say. All the mistakes.”

“It got me thinking too, Peter. About Em, whether it was really an accident.” I told him what Alice had said about the game being fixed. About Em and Marcus. The possibility that we had found the real diamonds. I steeled myself for anything he might tell me. I took his hand but it lay loose in mine. “We were so close once. It was never the same afterward. But maybe it didn’t begin then. David told me—”

“You thought I did it?”

“I don’t know.”

Peter gave a cold little laugh. “Funny, Andy, for a time I wondered if it was you. You were … possessive. Marcus and Em. I saw them, out in the courtyard. It occurred to me you might have too. You were so unpredictable then. When you ran out onto the ice, it was spiteful. That’s what I thought. Spiteful, to try to harm yourself in front of people who loved you. It made me wonder, but if it’s any consolation, I did think it was an accident. In the end. Stupid and tragic and pointless.”

Knowing I’d suspected Peter made it no easier. It made sense in a way. The violence that had always been in me, like a virus I had caught, from my mother, from Joe. But not in Peter, which was why he’d always been such an easy target. How could I ever have thought it was him? I said as much.

“You’re wrong, Andy, I’m afraid. It’s in all of us, given the right circumstances. But no, I would never have hurt Em.” He stopped. “It was so long ago, but speaking about it is still the hardest thing.”

“Tell me,” I said.

And he did.

It was Joe that Peter had hurt. He had gone to Darren, waiting, ankle-deep in mud by a digger on a half-built cul-de-sac, school bag over his shoulder, till Darren had finished what he was doing and come over.

“We went for a drive in his car, over the Downs, and I told him about Joe, what Joe was doing, how I wanted his help to get rid of him, make him go away and never come back. He thought it was funny at first, that I wanted to step up and protect my little girlfriend. He liked that. Said he’d look into it.”

Only he hadn’t, or nothing had happened, so Peter went back. Kept on at him, backed him into a corner.