‘Do you think he was planning on leaving?’ Fran talks over me. ‘I mean, really? Would he have left Laurel with nothing? I’ve been there, growing up with nothing, when my own father left. Maybe he thought that leaving me with no financial security wasn’t enough. He had to take Laurel too, and make sure I really did lose it all. He probably thought he’d never get caught.’ A strange light fills her eyes, and for a moment I feel desperately unnerved, convinced that she is a woman on the edge, close to losing it completely, and then it is gone, and she looks like the same old Fran again.

‘I don’t know, Fran. I feel like neither of us knew him at all.’ I bat away that nagging feeling that arises whenever I try to marry up the Dominic I knew with the man portrayed in the media.

Fran throws the last of the pile of clothing into the flames, and I see Dominic’s favourite golfing jumper, a pair of pyjama bottoms and his thick winter ski jacket go up in a plume of flames as the synthetic fibres catch alight. ‘I’m going to go away for a while, Anna. It’s time for you to move on, too.’

‘Wait—’ I process what she’s saying. ‘What do you mean you’re going away for a while . . . you’re leaving? What about Laurel?’

‘That’s why I’m leaving. For Laurel. She’s lost to me, Anna, and I can’t bear to sit in this house on my own, waiting for her to come home. Even if by some great chance they find her and she and I were reunited, do you honestly think that I could bring her up here? In a place full of the most hideous memories of the kind of man her father turned out to be?’

‘But . . . no, I suppose not,’ I say quietly. I suppose I had thought that I would move on eventually, but it still comes as a shock to hear Fran say the words. ‘I simply thought maybe . . .’

‘Maybe?’ she prompts, frowning at me.

‘Maybe you’d wait to see if Dominic did talk. But I can understand how you feel, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’ A hot flush creeps up my neck and I feel my ears start to burn. How embarrassing, to be so thoughtless, of course Fran wouldn’t want Laurel to return to this house once she comes home. If she ever comes home.

Fran pauses for a moment, staring into the flames of the bonfire, and I wonder if the scent of the smoke has the same effect on her as it does on me. She takes a deep breath, holding it for a moment before she speaks. ‘I’ve been in contact with Polly.’