‘Anyway. We didn’t get on like twins are supposed to. Catherine hated me. I started to feel it when we were probably around six or seven years old. I’d sense her glaring at me from across the room as I sat on the old bastard’s lap. Part of it, I think, was jealousy. I was prettier than Catherine and people commented on it all the time. And the old bastard – almost every day he’d admire me – in front of her. He’d dress us in these ridiculous dresses that looked like something out of a fairy tale, then stand back and say how I looked like an angel. His angel. I suppose I should have picked up the warning signs then, but I was too innocent to believe that adults could be so evil.’

‘Did you and Catherine go to school?’ I said, prompting her to continue.

‘We did, for a while.’

‘What was she like – at school, I mean?’

Olivia laughed humourlessly. ‘Worse than at home.’

‘How?’

She paused, took a ragged breath. ‘It probably sounds petty but she stole every friend I ever made. And spread nasty rumours about me. Got me in trouble with the teachers. Like I said, it doesn’t sound that bad now, but at the time it made my life hell. She bullied other children too. Eventually so many parents complained that the school expelled her.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Shut her down here for a few days. At the time I thought she deserved worse than that.’

‘What was she like when he let her out?’

Olivia fell silent for a moment.

She sighed. ‘She was quieter. A lot quieter, come to think of it. And she tried her hardest to please him any way she could. I’d still catch her staring daggers at me, but she spent most of her time – when I was around anyway – with her head in a book.’

‘Do you think that’s why she’s like …’

‘Like this?’ She snorted. She sounded exactly like Mother. A chill crawled across my shoulder blades.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I mean, being down here for so long. It must be hard to feel OK after that.’

She snorted again. ‘I’ve no sympathy for her. She didn’t have to do what he asked her to.’

‘Didn’t have to do what?’

She fell silent.

I swallowed and said, ‘Did he home-school her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like me,’ I said.

Olivia seemed not to notice I’d spoken. In a flat voice she said, ‘When I was twelve he started to abuse me. It went on for three years until I got pregnant and ran away.’

She was quiet for a long time. I waited. At last, she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.

‘He never, ever touched Catherine,’ she said, her voice turning hard. ‘But she knew – yet she never said anything to anyone.’

I gasped, unable to hide my shock. ‘What? She—’