She’d included no address on Peter’s letter, and this was because … well, why was it? She believed now that she’d needed to turn her back on him to survive, and the more time passed, the less she saw a path back to him. Peter had made her escape possible, but he was also an integral part of the horror. While Daniel … well, he’d inhabited higher ground than the Connors, he lived where the air was pure and clear. She’d stayed on in Paris for far longer than she’d intended, in case he should one day knock on her door.

‘I saw Peter,’ Dan said. ‘When I went looking for you.’

If she hadn’t been sitting down, her legs might have given way. Slowly, she turned her head, which still rested on her knees, to look at him.

‘He said you weren’t coming back, but he said it kindly.’

‘You saw Peter.’

‘The day after you disappeared, yeah. He didn’t say why you’d gone, but he didn’t seem to be freaking out, so I figured he knew more than I did.’

She lifted her head. ‘Peter was my saving grace, for all of my childhood and adolescence.’

‘Wonder where he is now?’

The question was casually asked, and not unreasonable, and Ali knew that not having an answer to it was a disgrace, an abdication of love and duty. She shrugged and looked profoundly unhappy. ‘All I can say is none of this seemed quite so abysmally dysfunctional until I said it out loud to you. Michael didn’t seem to need to know anything about my past, it was enough for him that I’d pitched up in his life in Spain, and when we went back to Australia together, it felt to me almost like a sort of symbolic flourish, the completion of my disappearing act. I was subsumed by the McCormacks, and I made no protest, put up no resistance. Why would I? It was a relief, on so many levels.’

Daniel heaved a long sigh, leaned back where he sat, and stared at the ceiling.

‘What?’ Ali reached out a hand and took hold of one of his. ‘What is it?’

He looked at her, and considered her question. What is it? It was Michael McCormack, Spain, Australia, her disappearing act: it was the series of events that had rolled inexorably onward and kept them apart, when they’d been young enough and full enough of love for each other that they could have conquered anything.

‘What?’ Ali said again.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I need another drink.’