As she’d already thought, there couldn’t be enough evidence for the police, so this must be a way of getting back at someone purely for their own satisfaction. Rightly or wrongly they’d decided Billy was innocent and someone else guilty. Lifting the blame and pushing it onto someone else was maybe a way of ridding themselves of the guilt. Or sharing it.

The only thing Anna knew was that her mother had been instrumental in Eliza’s removal from Billy’s care. But what if it hadn’t ended there?

Chapter Seventy-Four

2019

Lizzie

Dom had been snoring gently when she’d returned to the room the previous night. Lizzie had watched him, silent tears tracking down her face. She was still reeling from Rob’s recollection of what had happened in her bedroom when she was eight years old, his words echoing in her mind:

‘It was you. You who touched me. And made me touch you.’

She’d never felt so horrified.

Her own reaction had been quick, drenched in disbelief:

‘I was eight years old, Rob – why are you saying this? Why would you lie about something like this?’

But, as he’d crumpled into the chair, his head buried in his hands, she’d known. He wasn’t lying. After he’d composed himself, he’d told Lizzie everything he remembered from that afternoon. How he’d freaked out. How he’d thought Billy was going to kill him if he’d seen, or if Eliza told him. Who’d believe an older boy over an eight-year-old girl? Certainly not the girl’s father. She would be seen as the victim, not him. Rob said he’d run out of the bungalow and legged it back to the safety of the shop and been afraid for weeks afterwards that Billy Cawley would come for him.

He’d never spoken to anyone about what happened. After years of ignoring it, it’d been put to the back of his mind – other problems had replaced the incident: Eliza had been taken away, Jonie had been abducted and killed. He’d told Lizzie how, at first, he believed he would somehow get the blame for Jonie. Like someone would find out about Eliza and him and add two and two together and come up with ten. Assume he was a delinquent, someone who touched up girls – and people would think he’d harmed Jonie too.

Lizzie’s heart had ached for him. His childhood had been upturned, ruined. Innocence lost.

The same as Lizzie.

Only she’d caused Rob’s distress.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she’d said.

‘You can’t blame yourself. You were a child, for God’s sake, and kids experiment. It’s just what you did was more, well … adult than most. Blame him – the abuse he inflicted on you.’

Lizzie had turned from her sleeping husband and slowly slid open the bottom drawer of the dresser, retrieving the piece of cloth – the one she’d found in the doll’s head. She’d sat silently, turning the bloodstained strip of material over in her hands. She’d studied it. The material was from her dress – she recognised the now-faded yellow flowers from a photograph of Eliza wearing it. One of the few photos she’d seen of herself from childhood. Instinct had told her to take it when she’d been inside Anna’s shed.