‘Neither Finn nor I could escape our lost half-sister – though the irony is, I would have loved an older sister. In fact, I often spend time just sitting on the bench, just like my dad and Finn do. It’s as though I can reach her there. It’s as though I almost know her. I wish I had.’

You were sitting on Kyla’s bench the night of the ghost walk.

She turns and meets my eye. ‘Do you believe there’s something else?’ She looks about her, then upwards, and it’s as though she can see right through the ceiling and into the heavens. ‘You know, after this?’

‘I hope so,’ I say, and I take hold of her hand and squeeze.

*

We’ve been at Neil’s house for over an hour, and now, as often happens at funerals, family and friends are sharing memories, laughing, their tongues loosened by alcohol. I’ve overstayed.

‘I’m going to make a move for home,’ I say, and Finn and Julia nod enthusiastically, seeming desperate to leave themselves. In fact, they leave before me as I need the loo, and as I watch them go, Julia calls out that we must stay in touch. ‘No reason not to,’ she says, with a flourish. ‘We live so close, and now Finn’s feeling so much better he can travel down anytime.’

*

As I leave the bathroom, and head onto the landing, I hear voices. One of them is Neil, and it’s coming from the master bedroom.

‘Perhaps it was all my fault,’ he’s saying through tears, his voice sounding broken.

I move across the landing, and peer through the gap in the door. The white-haired man who stepped up when Neil crumbled at the funeral, who I now know is his father, sits with him on the edge of a king-sized bed.

‘No, Neil,’ he says. ‘You mustn’t think like that.’

‘But if I’d been here more, done more to prevent the brewing anger in Elise about me replacing her mum, maybe Rosamund would never have lost the baby, and Elise would still be here.’

The man puts his hand over Neil’s. ‘I’m so sorry about the baby, son. But I can’t see how you being here would have changed that.’

‘But it might have.’ A beat. ‘I knew my Elise hated Rosamund. How full of anger she was, and I did nothing.’ He breaks off sobbing, his head in his hands, and I cover my mouth, tears springing to my eyes.

It’s a while before Neil is calm enough to say, ‘She confessed to having an affair with Jackson.’

His father shakes his head. ‘Oh, Neil, I’m so sorry.’

‘Me too, I was a fool, knew what she was like when I met her, but kidded myself we had something special. She used to sleep with him in his caravan in Laurel Wood. Can you believe that?’