Ingrid was there at the back of the church. A suitably sombre expression on her face. I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. It had been she who’d been driving the blue car that had scared me senseless just before it had all happened. She’d looked for an interview with me, which I’d politely declined. She’d never hear my side of the story.

Paul and Beth had held my hands tight as Clare was lowered into the ground. Poor Mrs Taylor was buckled with grief. Ronan had to hold her up while Mr Taylor held his composure, just. He was broken. Utterly destroyed. I struggled to be able to look him in the eye. I felt the weight of Clare’s death like a stone around my neck. It could have been me. I could have been in the grave beside her. It was only fate or luck or something that I wasn’t.

Julie didn’t even make it to the funeral. She was still in County Down. Brendan had said she was struggling to cope. She was struggling to come to terms with the fact that she, too, had been taken in by Aaron, who’d pretended to be a father. Pretended to have children at the same school as her own children. That had scared her – how close he’d come to her own children. Just as it scared me. Could he have hurt Molly and Beth, or would he have stopped after he killed me, or Julie? I suppose we’ll never know.

As the crowds were dispersing, Ronan invited us back to the Taylors’ house for tea and sandwiches, but I was tired. I wanted to be at home. I wanted to escape the pervading sense of grief. I wanted to heal with my family around me.

As Paul pushed me back towards the car, I saw the woman with red hair pushing Elizabeth through the cemetery gates in a wheelchair. We didn’t stop to chat – we were too far apart – but I lifted my hand and gave her a small wave. She nodded in acknowledgement and then returned to staring straight in front of her.

Clare Taylor hadn’t been the only person laid to rest that day.

Elizabeth

A fresh mound of dirt lay on top of the grave with a grey granite stone bearing the names of my beloved husband and daughter. Soon, Aaron’s name would be etched into the same stone in silver.

‘He’s at peace now,’ Cliona said and God, I hoped he was.

I hoped both he and Laura were. I hoped that if there was an afterlife, a greater being overseeing it all, they’d acknowledge Aaron’s troubles. They’d understand that I was still a mother who still loved her son. Who hoped to see him again one day.