‘Um … okay. Now? On the phone?’

‘No. In person. I need to show you something. Can you come here?’

‘Not right now, I’ve got … er … something on.’ She found herself stammering, afraid Anna would sense from her tone that she was about to meet Billy Cawley. Stupid, she knew – how could anyone know but her? And especially not merely from her voice. Her face reddened at the thought of her idiocy. Just knowing she was meeting with a convicted child killer, who happened to be her father, the one who reportedly abused and abandoned her as a child, was enough to bring to the surface a whole range of emotions. Dread. Insecurity. Anger. All of which made her feel her world was spinning, rotating in the wrong direction at high speed. Made her feel as though she and her thoughts were transparent.

‘Later this afternoon then? It’s important.’

‘Sure. I’ll ring when I’m on my way.’

The call ended. Lizzie’s blood fizzed as Anna’s words rang in her ears: ‘I need to show you something. It’s important.’

What now?

Anna’s attention was drawn to a sound. A crunching – tyres over gravel. But not a car.

Billy Cawley’s hunched figure came into view, his legs slowly pumping as he cycled up the drive. Lizzie lurched forwards, and on shaky legs ran to him, hoping no one had seen his approach.

‘Stop there. We’ll walk back the way you came,’ Lizzie said. Her voice was more solid than she felt. ‘Leave the bike behind one of the trees.’

Billy silently obeyed her order. He turned back to face her. In the bright, midday sunshine, he looked very different from last night. Light caught the white-grey streaks of his hair, making it shimmer. It was cut short at the sides, the top slightly longer and swept back with gel, or oil, revealing a receding hairline. He’d worn it longer when she was little, and it had been blond and straggly, more unkempt. Not that she remembered him – it was his photos from the newspapers she was recalling now. He was heavier set, not scrawny as he’d been then. He had that typical ‘hard man’ quality, she thought. He reminded her of Ray Winstone, the actor who always seemed to play gangster-type roles. Maybe Billy had always had that air about him, or maybe he’d gained it from years of incarceration.

She drew in a deep breath to control her rising anxiety. She could be making a huge mistake being here with him. Alone. No one knowing. She regretted not confiding in Anna on the phone just now. She needn’t have said who she was with, just that she had a meeting with someone, and it might turn nasty, and if she didn’t call Anna back by three, to alert the police or something. Lizzie put her hand in her jeans pocket, touching her mobile phone. It didn’t offer a hundred per cent reassurance, though – the area wasn’t great for signal, and the further into the lanes she went, the likelihood of being able to make any calls, even to 999, was slim to non-existent. It wasn’t just her network that was dodgy; she’d been told no network was reliable in some areas of Mapledon.