On the pages I had seen, he had. They started on the night of the sleep-out. Iona and Bonnie were depicted in the centre of the page; the small circle of kids gathered around the fire behind were only a blur. He must have spent ages watching her, copying her. ‘I suppose,’ I say weakly. ‘I can’t be sure.’

Harwood nods as if this is good enough and my earlier desire to be useful has been replaced by a heavy guilt. He flips over a page in his pad and asks if my family knew Iona before she moved to the island.

‘No, of course not.’

He looks up, waits a moment.

‘We met her the day she arrived,’ I say. ‘I remember it.’

Again there is an uncomfortable pause and I mirror his questioning expression. ‘Why do you ask?’

The detective shakes his head as if his question isn’t relevant, but I can tell it is. For some reason he thinks we might have met her before. ‘Tell me about the last few days of your time on the island,’ he says. ‘Can you recall anything at all that’s in any way unusual?’

Apart from the fact we were hauled away in the middle of a storm?

Apart from the fact I saw Iona again when everyone else thought she was gone?

I shake my head, knowing my lie will eat away at me, but I don’t know what good can come of the truth. There is nothing useful in telling the detective I believe my father was having an affair with her. Not when Danny has already told them he killed her.

I sink back, drained, as Harwood checks the time on his watch. Hopefully we are done because I have nothing left to give.

But he has another question for me and asks it with his head cocked, his eyebrows furrowed. ‘Was Danny ever violent?’

‘No,’ I say emphatically. I feel the prick of threatening tears. ‘Never. He was the gentlest person I know.’ My mind skims past the image of the bird, the way he said he’d wrapped it tightly so he didn’t drop her. I so wanted to believe him. ‘That’s why none of this makes sense,’ I say.

Harwood nods and sits back in his own sofa. He chews on his bottom lip as he considers whatever it is he wants to tell me. Eventually he says, ‘Your brother says he and Miss Byrnes argued the night of September the eighth.’

I try not to react at the date. It was our last whole night, the one before we left.

‘He says he pushed her backwards and she fell over a cliff. Is there anything about his story you recall?’

I stare at him in utter shock, shaking my head.

‘And Danny tells us this was the last he saw of her,’ Harwood says.

I frown. ‘But – she was buried in the woods,’ I say.