Am I being brave or completely stupid? The reality is I’ve lately been so driven by a need for the truth that I’ve become blind to its fall-out.

My feet slap against the ground, mud splattering up my legs, clothes sticking like glue to my skin.

There’s no point contemplating alternatives because there no longer are any. I won’t stop until I find out if my brother killed Iona or whether someone else is happy to let him think he did.

I won’t stop regardless of what else I find.

A dim light flickers behind Bob and Ruth’s thin curtain. I knock on the door and wait only moments before Ruth opens it. Like Annie she is dressed for bed, with a long purple velvet dressing gown tied around the waist. Her face pales when I remove my hood, but she stands aside without speaking.

When I step in she closes the door, swooping past me to the kitchen where she stops short at the table, sweeping a hand across it, gathering photos which she piles in one hand.

‘Jill?’ I ask.

Ruth nods.

‘Is Bob here?’ I look around.

‘He’s out back. A tree came down. It shattered a window.’

‘Ruth, I need to speak to you both.’

She nods again, her eyes dropping to the photos clutched tightly in her hand. ‘She didn’t like it on the clifftop, did she? Jill. She never liked it there. I knew that, but he insisted it was where we put the bench. “Everyone will see it here,” he said. But she never liked it.’

‘Jill liked the whole island,’ I say. Water slides off the end of my coat, making tiny puddles at my feet. I take it off and lay it in a heap on the doormat. She sinks on to a chair and I pull out one opposite.

‘But it wasn’t her favourite place,’ Ruth insists. ‘Where was that?’ Her glassy eyes look right through me.

‘The lakes,’ I say. ‘Jill liked the lakes.’

Ruth fights back tears, holding a hand over her mouth. ‘We drifted apart. When she was little we did everything together, but at some point—’ She breaks off. ‘I never stood up to him. Jill knew that. I saw in her eyes she’d lost faith in me and still I did nothing.’

‘Jill knew you loved her,’ I say. Ruth’s pain is obvious and, regardless of what she’s done, my heart still tears for her.

‘My mother always told me to make my husband my priority and for years Bob was all I had. I never expected Jill would one day come along. When she did I still carried on putting him first. Even when I knew he was wrong.

‘You know, despite everything, I admired your mother for that,’ Ruth goes on. ‘Your mother always did what was right by her children.’