‘You’ve done what you wanted. You went back to that place when you shouldn’t have. Now we just need to leave this alone. Please, Stella, I’m begging you. Stay out of it.’

But all I can see is my brother, his long legs dangling out of the treehouse, clutching his book to his chest like nothing else mattered. Whatever he did, I don’t believe he intended to.

‘I don’t want you digging any more,’ she says, and my mind drifts to the threat which I’d tucked into my coat pocket before I left.

Bonnie looks fearful, as if there’s more she doesn’t want me finding out. She pulls out of my grip and wanders away. With her back to me, she braces herself before opening up the dishwasher and unloading it.

No, I’m sure she’s just worried about what will happen to her and the boys following Danny’s confession.

‘Bon, why did you say you thought it was your fault we left?’ I ask her.

She pauses; a mug in her hand stops midway between the dishwasher and the counter before she slams it down. ‘I was once told something,’ she says. ‘But it was a lie.’

‘What—’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Bonnie snaps. ‘And you still haven’t reassured me you’re going to drop all this raking over the past.’ She straightens and turns to me. ‘Stella?’ she prompts when I don’t answer.

‘I will,’ I say, though I already know that is impossible. My brother is sitting in a police cell and I need to know if he should be there, because I can’t deny there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe he should.

Chapter Eighteen

I have barely stepped off Bonnie’s front steps when I get a call from a Detective Harwood who says he would like to speak to me. I agree to meet him in two hours and he gives me the address of a house near Bournemouth, so close to where I have just come from this morning that I wish I had known before making the forty-minute drive back to Winchester.

As soon as I get home I peel off my clothes and stand under a shower, piping-hot water raining down on my skin until it almost scalds me. I need this sting of pain to focus on as my head is a mess. In many ways thinking about my brother and what I can do is easiest, because as soon as I stop my head is filled with thoughts too difficult to accept: that everything I once believed was a lie.