‘I didn’t realise what time it was,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere.’ He bites at the inside of his cheek. He’s straining to see past the cars in line ahead of him. ‘You know what really gets me?’ His eyes are pinned forward. ‘People who think they can manipulate me. Take advantage.’

‘I didn’t, I wasn’t—’

‘Not you.’

‘Oh.’ I think back to the tiny woman in the bed who can’t talk. Or won’t talk. ‘I don’t think it’s that simple.’

‘Get out the fucking way,’ he shouts again, this time at someone hogging the space between two lanes. I’m on alert, leaning forward to make sure I can see out of the side mirror and into his blind spot. The car jerks and shifts as he moves up the line, squeezing us through a tiny gap.

‘It seems pretty simple to me.’ He leans to see past the bollard; he’s next onto the roundabout. ‘We don’t know her, do we?’

‘You do.’

‘I do?’ He takes his eyes off the road to look in my direction for the first time since we left the house. He shakes his head. ‘I did a few jobs for her. That’s it. Our David had more in common with her than I did. And even then they weren’t exactly best mates.’

‘She had your number.’

‘Yeah, and why? That’s what gets my fucking shit. I signed up to help her, make sure she didn’t get fleeced by some cowboy, and the next thing I know I’m in her house, finding evidence to suggest your mute patient isn’t as innocent and needy as she first appears.’

‘We don’t know that, Rhys.’

He throws me a look then pulls out behind a bus, changing lanes on the roundabout to sneak in ahead of it and fly around the island. On the other side, he pulls into the lay-by in front of the wine shop. A new restaurant pushes the smell of cooked garlic into the evening air. The bus – my bus – pulls in behind him, and I have to shield my eyes from the flashing lights reflected in the wing mirror. ‘The bus,’ he says flatly, pointing behind him to make me hurry up.

Before I’ve fully closed the door, he’s pulled off and away, zipping through the lanes and down the hill, out of sight. The bus rolls up to me, the doors steam dump, then open. I pay, swing from rail to rail until I fall into a seat at the back of the bus. What the hell just happened?

Chapter Twenty-Two

RHYS

The lights at the bottom of Woodseats turn red for the pedestrian crossing and I slam my brakes on. Coming to a standstill gives me a moment to think, to breathe. I need a drink. I need several drinks. This can’t be happening. I refuse to believe it, much less even think it.

I throw the van across two spaces in The Big Tree pub car park. Flicking the engine off, I sit, locking my arms against the steering wheel to force my back into the seat. My head pounds, my throat stings. My mind is full of images of newspaper cuttings, our David, Susan’s house. Kat, standing at the bus stop in the pissing rain. This wasn’t the answer I wanted to find. I was looking for insight, a guide, some hint at what drives a person to end their life, not evidence that Susan gave up because she couldn’t face the truth about how selfish she’d been. How she’d left a child for dead. A child that, if lucky enough to be given a second chance, might one day try to find out who he is. What his story is. A child for whom the truth might be a push over an emotional clifftop. Tumbling, spiralling, until he hits a rock bottom that nobody sees, his emotions catapulting out of control.