Once inside she lets go, leaning over to swirl her hand in the water and turning off the taps. I feel like a child as she gently removes the towel and hangs it on a rail, nodding towards my knickers and bra. Silently I remove them and climb into the bath, sinking under the heat of the water, grateful for the bubbles that cover me.

‘Annie, tell me what happened. I need to know.’

‘We can talk downstairs when you’ve warmed up,’ she says.

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I need to know now. It wasn’t Mum, was it?’

Annie frowns and says softly, ‘Yes. I’m afraid it was.’

‘No!’ I let out a painful wail as I close my eyes, sinking deeper into the water. When I open them I see the same pain etched into the lines of her face.

‘You knew. All this time you knew what she’d done. Was it you who told them to leave the island?’

‘No. Your parents made their own decision about that.’

‘How could you? I mean, you’ve lied for her, for so many years. Why did you do that?’

‘I loved your mother,’ she says simply. ‘I loved you all. What she did might have been wrong, but …’ Annie pauses, pulling out a wicker stool from beside the basin and lowering herself awkwardly on to it. ‘I don’t believe she intended it to happen. It was an accident. Your mother was scared.’

‘So she should have been,’ I say, gulping back a sob. ‘After what she did.’

Annie’s eyes bore into mine but she is expressionless. I can’t read her.

‘You know about Bonnie?’

‘I know,’ Annie says.

‘Who else does?’ I cry.

‘No one. No one else at all.’

‘Apart from Bob and Ruth.’

‘Yes, apart from them.’

‘God! I don’t believe what they all did. Did you help Mum and Dad come over here? Dad said they knew you before. Was it you who did that?’

‘Yes,’ she says calmly.

‘Why?’ I gasp, incredulous. ‘I mean, why would you?’

‘I knew your gran for a very long time. She was a good, old friend of mine. She did something once for me that I will never forget. She saved my life. She saved me from someone who would have hurt me. So when she asked me for help, I would have done anything.’

‘It was my gran’s idea?’ I cry.

‘She saw how those families lived in squalor. Ways you couldn’t imagine. Wallpaper peeling off damp walls, holes in the bare floorboards. She used to tell me it was like they were in the midst of a war zone, some of them six children sleeping in the same dirty room they ate and washed in. One day she arrived to find one of her mothers holding her baby as she tried to stop a bulldozer knocking her home down.