The waiter came back and took their order. Then Josh looked at Claire. ‘Go on,’ he said.

Claire started to speak. She told him about all that had happened on the night she vanished from his life. About Ciaran and Jeb Cleaver and Shauna coming up to her in the lane. Them killing Blue and burying his remains in the church in the dell. The rape inside the little church that she had always loved so much. The threat from Shauna that she would join Blue and all her family in death if she didn’t clear out and never come back. The fact that the brutal rape she suffered led to her giving birth to Suki. Running away, first to Ireland and then to America, terrified for her life.

Josh listened throughout. Their meal arrived and neither of them ate a thing. Claire kept talking. Finally, she fell silent.

‘Say something,’ she said when he sat there, stunned, appalled by all that he had heard.

‘She did that to you. Shauna. Set those Cleaver bastards on you?’ he said. He wanted to hit something. He was incandescent with fury. From what Rowan Cleaver had told him, he thought they’d just thrown a scare into Claire; not that they’d raped her.

Claire nodded.

‘Holy shit,’ said Josh, and drained his wine. Ciaran was dead and out of reach. But Jeb wasn’t. ‘I’m going to kill that low-life son of a bitch,’ he said.

Claire looked alarmed at that. She caught his hand. ‘No! If you do anything to him, then Shauna could find out. She’d know that you know. And how could you have heard that, except from me? Promise me you won’t start anything? You have to promise me!’

Josh shook his head.

‘Please!’ said Claire. She was thinking of Eva, Pally and Trace.

He looked at her. ‘You’re still frightened of her? Even now?’

‘She threatened my parents, and Trace. She meant it. Please promise.’

‘All right. I do.’

The waiter came over, looked at their untouched plates with concern. ‘Is everything all right with your meal?’ he asked.

‘Yeah, it’s fine, just take the plates away, will you?’ said Josh.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Claire. ‘This must be such a shock to you.’

‘Christ,’ he muttered, his brain spinning.

Josh was thinking that Shauna’s evil truly knew no bounds. She’d shoved Claire aside and railroaded him into marriage. She’d got her way. But then – Shauna always did, didn’t she? He thought of Claire standing in his suite upstairs, looking nervously through the open door at the bed there. Then he thought of all she’d been through.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ he said, choked with emotion. ‘I should have been there to protect you. I was an arsehole. I was stupid.’

‘You were young,’ said Claire. ‘Look – here’s Suki.’