‘She wanted to take them both. My child and my husband.’ She flutters her hands. ‘It was too much. All in one day. You that morning. Her that night. I followed him there, you see.’ Eliza takes a shuddering breath and I picture what happened. Zac slipping out of Jane’s house, then Eliza sneaking in.

Eliza gulps. ‘Zac wouldn’t touch me, but he’d left her smiling in her sleep. I hadn’t planned to do it, but that smile . . . I thought she wouldn’t wake, you see, but it was so hard.’ I recall the red mark on Eliza’s cheek. She’d said Alice did it. But it must have been Jane, fighting back.’ Eliza’s voice goes flat. ‘I left the pillow on her face, so I didn’t have to look.’

The pillow was gone by the time I arrived, and nobody mentioned it until yesterday. Was its removal part of the forensic processes? Or had Maxine wanted to make sure I saw Jane, that I had no choice but to look? Had Maxine known that by forcing me to see, I would care all the more about what had happened to Jane? That I wouldn’t be able to let it go?

I wanted you invested in what happened to Jane. That was what Maxine said on Monday when I asked why she’d let me follow her to Cheltenham.

‘I tried to make her arms and legs pretty.’ Eliza is like a child seeking praise. ‘I covered her – Zac had left her naked – I didn’t want others to see that.’ She looks behind her, then up, into a sky that is so blue it makes my eyes hurt. ‘They’ll be here soon, from when I called 999. You need to go away, Holly, before they arrive.’

I cannot walk, and my head has broken into pieces, but I manage to slip a hand into the pocket of my dress. I concentrate with every shred of brain I have left, as if trying to levitate an impossible object. The force of my mind, my body, my fingers, all going in one direction.

Eliza moves closer, and raises herself, so just her shins are on the grass, her profile to the cliff edge. She is still near my feet, but there are two of her, and I cannot decide which one is the real Eliza because my eyes are playing tricks on me.

‘If you don’t leave, they’ll take Alice away. You’ll tell them what I did to Jane. You want to help me, don’t you?’

‘No tell.’