‘No, I didn’t!’

‘You did. The smoking, for instance. I never saw you smoke a cigarette in your life until that summer. Then you were smoking Marlboro Lights – Charlotte’s brand of choice. You began to dress like her.’

‘What?’

‘You never wore dresses when we first met. Or hardly ever. Apart from school and the odd formal occasion, you were always in jeans and T-shirts – you were kind of grungy, Hilary, and I liked that about you. But then you started wearing dresses, chiffony numbers, or little tight sleeveless things. All of a sudden, you were wearing red and pink and orange – a riot of colours – spending a fortune on designer clothes. Christ, to this day you still dress like her. You dyed your hair the same colour as hers. And why? There was nothing wrong with your brown hair. It was lovely the way it was.’

His voice has lost its power. There’s a melancholy note in it now. Indistinctly, she thinks she hears him say: ‘Sometimes I think you just do it to punish me.’

She absorbs the implication of his words – that she is a fraud, a cheap fake, her whole life built on a persona that is not her own, and now she feels the cracks running through it, the surface about to break.

‘This thing with Anton,’ he says now. ‘What did you think was going to happen?’

Biting her lip, she shrugs. ‘I thought he loved me. I thought that, once he was released from prison, we would be together.’

‘I see.’ He runs a hand over his mouth, leaning forward. ‘But he’s been out for over two months now.’

‘I know, but we had to wait, you see? So as not to arouse suspicion.’

‘What suspicion?’ A frown appears on his face as he gazes at her intently.

‘That I knew about it. So that I couldn’t be charged with conspiracy.’

He’s staring at her, nonplussed. ‘You knew about what?’

She whispers it. ‘About Charlotte. That he was going to kill her.’

The look he gives her is awful. And it’s only then as she says it out loud that she realizes how dreadful her admission is. How profoundly wrong.

His manner changes. Hilary sees him drawing himself in, growing guarded. He gets up from the bed. ‘Greg?’ she asks.

But he won’t meet her eyes. Instead he moves away from the bed, warily casting a glance at her as he reaches the door. It’s as if he’s afraid of me, Hilary thinks, amazed. And then she finds herself alone, a crumpled mess in the corner of the room.

She presses her hands to her eyes, her thoughts coming at her in a panicky rush. She wishes she hadn’t left her glass of wine downstairs. Right now, she needs a crutch.