I’d only spoken to Julie on the phone. She was still in County Down with Brendan and his family. She had no memory of Clare treating Laura so badly. Or maybe, like me, she had buried them away somewhere. Grateful that it wasn’t us. Happy to be in our group of friends and not wanting to rock the boat. The Clare I knew, the woman she became, would’ve been horrified to think she could’ve made someone feel so badly. Clare wasn’t a bad person, but in her teenage years she’d made mistakes. We all had.

I didn’t tell the Taylor family what Aaron had said. What good would it do to them? It would only bring more pain and God knows, we all had enough of that to contend with. I didn’t tell them, or anyone, about the recording of Clare pleading for her life, either. I tried to bury it and hoped it would stay there. The police had yet to uncover Aaron’s phone, despite combing the school building for it.

‘Are you nervous?’ Paul asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

‘Yes. I know I shouldn’t be. But I am.’

‘You can still change your mind,’ he said as we arrived on the correct floor and the doors opened again.

‘Nope. I need to do this.’

He pushed me through to the ward. I noticed glances from the staff, who no doubt knew who I was. What had happened. How close I’d come to a horrific end.

A woman with curly red hair introduced herself as Cliona, Mrs O’Loughlin’s social worker, and led me to her room.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ Paul said. ‘Grab a cup of tea or something.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up at him, noticing how he looked at me, feeling a sadness at what we had done to each other. He turned and Cliona pushed my chair into the room where this woman – who I’d last seen in the kitchen of Clare’s house – was resting in bed. She looked smaller. Frail. Older. There was a sadness to her that made my heart ache.

‘Elizabeth,’ I said, my voice cracking with emotion.

‘And you must be Rachel,’ she said, taking in my appearance. ‘I’m so, so sorry my boy did this to you. And hurt your friend. I didn’t think …’

‘Shush. You’ve nothing to apologise for,’ I said, tears rolling down my cheeks. ‘You’ve lost so much, too. I’m so sorry if anything I ever said or did to Laura contributed in any way to her death …’