‘I was such a coward,’ he threw out into the room. ‘All around me, I just saw parties and people and it felt like the beginning of something. Of my life. I was so selfish, I resented Claudia and the way she tied me to the Cove, to my father, to everything I wanted to run away from.

‘So when she asked me to take her to the summer ball, I thought … this is it. I’d take her to the prom and then break things off with her. Like that makes any sense,’ he said, hating the way he’d been back then. The sheer selfishness of it all. Running a hand through his hair, he turned to look at Lily, fearing disgust or disappointment. But there she was, still open, still compassionate.

‘When she offered to drive, I was thankful. Not because I wanted to drink, but because I thought that at least it would mean I wouldn’t have to drive her home after any kind of awkward confrontation,’ he said, desperately wanting to pull at his hair. Anger at himself and frustration scoured deeply into his chest. ‘So when she picked me up, I think I was so focused on trying to figure out what to say that I just didn’t realize. I couldn’t see that she wasn’t sober. I just thought she was excited about the party.

‘I’d had no idea things had got so bad that she’d started taking drugs, let alone drinking. If I hadn’t been so damn focused on myself, I would have realized sooner. I would have made her stop the car.

‘But I didn’t.’ He ran another hand over his face. ‘A friend from uni called while we were in the car. A picture of her flashed up on the screen and Claudia saw it. Demanded to know whether I was seeing her. It … was awful. She was screaming and crying and I told her it wasn’t like that. Tried to make her see. I asked her to pull over, but she just increased the speed. We came up so fast behind you – behind Victoria’s car – and I was yelling at her to slow down, but she didn’t and when she tried to overtake you …’ He didn’t need to say the rest. Lily knew. They all knew. But the pain in his chest, it was tearing him apart.

Lily finally came up from the bed to stand in front of him, taking his hands in the warmth of hers, the smoothness of her skin once again somehow lessening the biting hold of the past.

‘It wasn’t your fault that Claudia was high and drunk. The rain was torrential and it quite possibly would have happened anyway. Maybe not to us, but to someone else,’ Lily said.