‘I’m so sorry.’

‘Those months after Lily disappeared were awful. My mother was as cold as ever and my dad just drank more, and neither of them talked to each other or to me. The little bits I knew, I learned from listening to their conversations with other people.’

Again, no compunction about eavesdropping. Cora is, by any definition, unlike anyone I’ve ever met. Or perhaps she’s just more honest.

‘It sounds like the whole thing had a dreadful impact on your family,’ I say, thinking about her father’s death. ‘But it still wasn’t your fault. It was your mother’s decision to muddy the truth. You were a child.’ I can’t help wondering about the report that she was hurting Lily but I’m not going to ask. Instead I say: ‘People don’t realize, I suppose, about the wider impact of Lily’s disappearance. They think about Mary and Robbie and Lily, but not the effect it had on the Rowanbrook community too?’

‘Exactly. And you can see why I didn’t want to speak about it – any of it; the morning it happened, the police, the claim that I was hurting Lily, my dad’s death … But now, I realize I need to be the one to break the cycle. So I decided rather than leaving you in the dark, like I was in the dark, I’ll talk.’

This has the air of a rehearsed speech – a conjured-up piece of psychobabble – but I’m not going to argue.

‘Perhaps,’ she says, ‘after all these years, you and I might be the ones to solve this?’

‘Maybe …’ This is dangerous ground. I need my questions answered but I really don’t want Cora or anyone else asking their own questions.

‘We could start with the things you found online about Lily – the stuff about her being ill, and the name Lila. Will we have a look on those websites together?’

Oh crap. ‘Sure. I can’t remember now where I saw them, but how about I look tonight on my laptop and send you the links?’

A pause. ‘OK then. I want to get to the bottom of this. For my dad’s sake. He drank himself to death over what happened. It wasn’t the bridge that killed him, he was gone long before then. If I can find out what happened to Lily, I’ll have justice for my dad. It won’t bring him back, but seeing the right person pay will help.’

I swallow, unable to think of anything to say. And together we sit, staring at the flower beds and the riot of colour under the hot June sun, the idyllic scene belying everything going on inside my mind.

My head is pounding when I leave Cora’s garden – too much sun or too much coffee or perhaps just too much ricocheting around in my brain. The headache is still there that night when Mark texts to say he’ll be late home, and I don’t mean to take it out on the kids but when Ben puts his uneaten pasta on to Emily’s plate and Emily throws it back towards his, missing it and hitting the floor, I lose it.