I know why you were asking about Lily.

I haven’t replied and she hasn’t texted again.

Yet.

‘Joanna, where are the kids? Oh yes, I’d forgotten they’d be in school. What a pity. Hopefully you’ll bring them to visit more now that you’re nearby. We keep forgetting what they look like!’

I nod and agree to bring the kids next time as she leads me through to her beautifully decorated living room. It’s a visual feast of cream – cream carpet, cream walls, cream sofas and a cream rug. Susie regularly begs us to bring the kids more often but once they’re here, she spends the entire time worrying about her cream living room and hinting that it might be time to go.

There’s a tray with a cafetière and some lemon cake already sitting on the glass-topped coffee table, and on the floor beside it a dark brown lidded box, marked ‘1982–1986’.

The radio is on, tuned to news headlines: more gorse fires, a funeral for the couple who died, and a delay on the DART train line this morning after an ‘incident’. Susie makes a face and switches it off.

‘We all know what “incident” means – some poor soul jumped, I’ll bet. And you’ve heard quite enough about fires lately. Anyway! I was thinking about all your questions and your … anxiety? Yes, anxiety about living in the Murphys’ old house, and I thought looking through some old photos might help. Yes? Yes.’ She pours coffee into two delicate china cups. ‘You’ll get a kick out of it too – Mark’s in lots of them. He’s a bit older than Ben but the spitting image of him. Right, let’s see …’

She pulls off the lid and I’m gripped by an urge to tell her to stop. To replace the lid, to walk away. But I need to know. Especially if Cora is about to expose the truth.

‘I went through them last night,’ Susie is saying, ‘to find as many of Lily and her family as I could. I got some of Eddie too, the man who had a fight with Robbie. Still can’t remember his surname.’

‘Hogan. Mark remembered.’

‘Of course! Eddie Hogan. Dreadful bull of a man. You’ll see. And it was his daughter rumoured to be sleeping with Robbie, I’d forgotten that. Pretty little thing but trouble, I’d say. Quite flighty. I can’t imagine Robbie was sleeping with her.’ She purses her lips in a way that tells me she doesn’t quite buy into her own certainty. ‘But the Hogans moved away soon after, and Tom and I had already moved by then, so there were very few of the old crowd left. Everything changed after Lily disappeared.’ She sounds wistful. ‘It was almost like no one could bear to live there any more.’

‘So it was just Mary and Robbie left?’

‘And then poor Robbie died, and Mary had to sell.’

‘Where did she move to?’

Susie blinks, looking sheepish. ‘Somewhere in the city centre I think, and then I believe she eventually went back to the States, though where exactly I’m not sure … I’m afraid we lost touch. That doesn’t cast me in a very good light, does it?’