‘Well?’ Heather paused and bit her lip, trying to remove the desperate tone from her voice. ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

When Reave spoke again, his voice was softer than it had been.

‘Your mother. She was different to the rest of them. Kinder, more innocent. She was a doe in those woods.’

‘My mum was? Different to who?’

He snorted. ‘The rest of the commune. They were there because their friends were doing it, or they wanted to take drugs and get drunk, but your mother, lass. She was different to everyone, to all other women. She knew how important the woods were, she knew …’

When he didn’t continue, Heather leaned forward again. ‘What did she know?’

He’s going to say she knew about the murders, she thought wildly. That my mother stood by and waited for him to come back every night with blood on his hands. The idea was horrifyingly appealing. If her mother had been a terrible person all along, she’d be free of her guilt.

‘She was innocent, but strong, too. I didn’t think it, not back then, but that just shows what I knew, doesn’t it? Like a rock under snow. I got her wrong, in lots of ways. She defied me, in the way that only a woman can.’

‘What do you mean?’

He shook his head, and Heather experienced a moment of pure despair. They would talk in circles for ever, the two of them, and he would always dangle this information just out of reach.

‘Michael? Please. Tell me what you mean. Did you … did you love her?’

‘I wanted to tell you another story,’ he said. ‘Would you let me?’

Heather pressed her lips together and swallowed down her frustration. Parker had moved so that he was standing behind her chair, and she wondered if she was close to being removed from the room again.

‘There was a king, and he was known for being the wisest king that ever lived. He was truly the … father of the land, and seemed to know about things almost before they’d happened. It was a mystery, but the people, his children loved him anyway. They didn’t ask how. They just trusted that he would always know.

‘Every day, he would be served dinner in his royal dining room, and the final course would be served on a covered silver platter. No one knew what was in the dish, as the king always dismissed his guests and servants before he ate it, and the servant who brought it was always instructed never to lift the lid.’

Reave took a slow breath. Something about the telling of the story seemed to have calmed him.