‘The time isn’t right,’ she cut me off, eyes jerking towards Danny who was spooning Cornflakes into his mouth.

‘Danny was happy there,’ I persisted, annoyed she still wouldn’t consider it. ‘Weren’t you, Dan?’

My brother looked up but didn’t answer as he pushed his chair away, carried his bowl to the sink, and hurriedly left the kitchen. Mum had to see how miserable living in the city was making him.

‘You know he’d be happier,’ I told her. ‘At least say you’ll think about it.’

She muttered she would, but less than two weeks later, Danny left. One day he heaved a heavy rucksack on to his back and told me he was going. Mum stood by the gate as we watched him, her face pale and haunted. She wore the exact same expression she’d had when she’d picked up the phone to the hospital the first time Bonnie had been admitted: like her world had fallen apart.

Her arm stretched up as if she was trying to reach for him, but as far as I knew she never made any effort to stop him. After that I began to question how Mum could have let the others leave too. Throughout my childhood she’d been the one holding us together, but each time one of them walked out the door I felt the snap of my family breaking further.

After Danny, I gave up asking about Evergreen. My heart was no longer in it and, once Mum died, the thought of the island without her seemed impossible. But the news has dredged up memories and stirred emotions I’d all but forgotten and, for once, I envy Bonnie’s ability to paper over it with her usual detachment.

Sunday morning I call my sister early. More than twenty-four hours after the news and I’m still procrastinating over speaking to Dad. ‘They say the body is female,’ I tell her. ‘But I don’t understand how she’s never been reported missing. Surely someone noticed she’d disappeared.’ I pause. ‘We knew everyone on that island. I still can’t help thinking we know her.’

‘Like who? Tess Carlton?’ Bonnie says, plucking a name from nowhere. ‘One of the Smyth twins? You think one killed the other?’

‘Bonnie, that’s a dreadful thing to say.’

‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ she murmurs, already losing interest in what I want to dissect. My attention drifts to the TV. They are in the garden again, the cameras panning around it and the dark woods that lie beyond, thick with trees where the sun only catches the very top of them. They look ghostly from this angle. Most visitors steered clear of them, but as children we’d run through the woods to the parts the light didn’t reach without a moment’s pause and no one thought anything of it.