My head spins, my emotions in tatters. She’s right. I can barely make sense of what she’s saying.

‘Elise. Was. Never. At. Drummondale House.’

‘What? But I saw her.’

She shakes her head. ‘Nobody saw her. How could they? She was never there. Although it was fun pretending she was.’

‘But she phoned you. She saw someone in a mask at her window.’

She shakes her head. ‘She wasn’t on the other end of the phone line that day.’

‘There was no intruder?’

‘Exactly. No intruder that night. I made the footprints in the snow. I even set out the Monopoly game as though we were playing. I built the snowman, whilst wearing Elise’s hat and coat – hoping you and Finn – both early risers would see me. And I walked to the top of Vine Hill when you were tobogganing, wearing Elise’s coat and hat. I looked down at you – hoping you would think I was Elise. I even sent a couple of threatening text messages to myself from a phone much like Elise’s, and left it on the bench for you to find. Though, if I’m honest, I got lucky with that one. The signal up there was pretty awful.’

She moves the blade from my throat, and brushes the flat side against my cheek.

‘But why?’ I manage.

‘Elise died at my hands, Amelia. Neil would never have forgiven me for that. I couldn’t let him find out. He was away, you see. I was watching TV, when Elise appeared in the lounge. She was spiteful. Angry. She’d found a letter your mum sent to Neil.

‘I got up, angry too, yelled at her for snooping in my things. But she was so vehement.’ She lowers her head. ‘God knows why I didn’t destroy the bloody letter.’ A beat, as she looks up and into my eyes, hers vacant and lifeless. ‘We rowed and she pushed me hard. I fell against the corner of the coffee table. The pain was like nothing I’d felt before. I knew I was losing my baby.’

She’s no longer brushing my face with the blade, and there are tears in her eyes. And despite the awful position I’m in, I feel her sadness, her pain at losing her child.

‘I cried out to Elise,’ she goes on. ‘Told her I was losing my baby, but she spat that the baby deserved to die.’

‘Oh God, Rosamund. That’s awful,’ I find myself saying, but she straightens her shoulders and the blade is back at my throat.

‘I reached for a brass ornament,’ she says. ‘Struck Elise.’

‘But you didn’t mean to kill her.’