Dad is sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. ‘Tomorrow we’ll start again,’ he whispers into the silent room.

We haven’t seen Rosamund since she went up to bed earlier. She must have been exhausted, and I remember how tiring pregnancy can be. Better she sleeps, than lie awake, her mind whirring with worry about Elise, when there’s nothing any of us can do.

‘Goodnight,’ Thomas says, raising his hand, as Maddie pushes his wheelchair into the downstairs bedroom. She closes the door on him, and heads upstairs to her own room without a word.

Finn is sleeping next to me on the sofa, and I rise, grab a blanket from a pile Maddie got from the airing cupboard earlier, and move to one of the armchairs. Dad gets to his feet and drops into the chair Maddie vacated. ‘I’m knackered,’ he says, closing his eyes.

I wonder, once we are all settled, whether I will actually sleep. My head feels thick and heavy, as though I’m carrying rocks inside my skull. They bump against my thoughts and worries, bruising them.

The candles snuff out one by one, and eventually the fire is nothing more than red embers. Dad and Finn snuffle and snore, and as the wind cries, whipping around the cottage like a phantom, my eyelids finally fall heavy over my eyes.

Chapter 32

A Year Ago

Amelia

Despite the long day at the beach, and feeling so tired at dinner, Amelia struggled to sleep, her mind whirring with thoughts of the ridiculous game of Truth or Lie, followed by Elise’s outburst, and Rosamund calling her stepdaughter a liar.

She tossed and turned for several hours, before rising and padding towards the window, gripping her Kindle in her mitts, intent on reading the night away.

She pulled back the curtain, and sat down in the wing-backed chair positioned so she could take in the view of the ruins and forest, the full moon lighting the area.

It was around midnight a flash of white in the forest disturbed her reading. Had she imagined it? Someone dressed in white flitting through the trees? A child perhaps? A shudder ran down her spine, as she peered closer to the window, the memory of Finn claiming ghosts wandered there – his dead sister – fresh in her mind. She swallowed. She was being ridiculous, and being spooked wasn’t going to help her already overactive mind. She pulled the curtain across, and continued reading.