‘This is bollocks! I think we went on one date, back in the day. Years ago. He spent the night chatting to his mates while I played the juke, bored out of my skull. Then he cut up nasty ’cos I wouldn’t go out with him again. I wouldn’t even let him in the trailer, locked the door on him, and he was there for nigh on an hour, knocking and shouting. I s’pose you were out fighting or you’d have seen. You’d have certainly heard. He left a half-eaten box of chocolates outside. And he kicked old Sand, our dog. I must have been mental to go out with him even once. But I was young and stupid. And it was just one date – God’s truth, Josh – then never again,’ lied Shauna, thinking Shit! How had he found that out?

Josh was silent, taking it in, thinking that she lied so easily. It came naturally to her.

‘Josh, you have to believe me,’ Shauna said in exasperation. ‘It was nothing. Now, who told you?’

But Josh turned his back to her. ‘It don’t matter. Turn the light out, will you, Shauna. I’m done in.’

Josh couldn’t sleep, not after that. As the luminous dial on the bedside clock read 2.05 a.m., in his mind’s eye he saw the flames of Eva Milo’s funeral pyre. Pally’s devastated face swirled in front of him as the man set light to what remained of his wife and to his daughter’s wedding gown, and sent them on their way together.

Now he was starting to see the whole picture. Shauna had been more tied in to those Cleaver bastards than he had ever known, and they had grabbed Claire, killed her dog, raped her, told her to go and never come back – on Shauna’s instructions.

The clock dial showed 3.14 a.m. when he started remembering the older Cleaver brothers, Ciaran and Rowan, coming into the kitchen at their old house overlooking the river. They’d brought shotguns, looking for him, intending to maim or kill him; 1978, that was the year – he’d never forget it. Shauna had saved him that night, no doubt about that. And the awfulness of what him and Shauna had to do afterwards – clearing away the bodies in the dead of night, praying that no one would see them at their grim task. Then sitting in the kitchen afterwards, exhausted, blood on the walls, blood and brains on the floor. It all had to be cleaned up, cleared away.

But Shauna saved me.

The memory was lodged there, at the back of his brain. He’d come in the back door that night, and Rowan Cleaver had been waiting for him at the door that led into the hall, holding the shotgun.

Josh looked at the illuminated dial on the clock again: 4.35 a.m.