‘Lucy sent the photo because she thinks we lied about Cedric wandering off,’ Willow said. ‘She thinks we killed him and buried him at the end of the garden behind the shed and then lied to her and Simon.’

Rick’s chin took on a dogged tilt. ‘And why the hell would we do that?’ he demanded.

‘I … I don’t know,’ faltered Willow. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Unless—’

‘Unless what?’

She stared at him, his expression etched like stone in the candlelight. ‘Unless you did it. Did you, Rick?’ Her voice was no more than a whisper.

‘Me?’

‘Yes. I know I didn’t do it, and nobody else could have had access in or out of the house or garden, because I always kept the doors shut. And the only time a door was left open was when you told me you’d accidentally forgotten to close the front door when you went out to the car. And that was the day Cedric went missing.’

When Willow went quiet, each and every one of them looked at Rick and waited for his response. If Ellis had felt awkward earlier watching Rick play with Willow’s hair, he now felt excruciatingly uncomfortable. It was quite an allegation Willow had just made, and all the more potent because she didn’t seem to be the sort of girl who went around accusing people of … well, frankly, of secretly burying cats.

‘Well?’ pressed Martha as the ominous silence lengthened.

Rick swivelled his head from Willow to Martha and looked at her with unnerving coolness before returning his attention to Willow.

‘Look, sweetheart,’ he said, reaching for her hand. ‘It sounds worse than it really is. You have to believe me when I say I was only trying to protect you from any distress. I know what you’re like, the slightest thing sets you off. All that happened was that the blasted cat slipped out through the open door and before I could do anything, a passing car ran over him. The driver of the car didn’t even stop. He probably didn’t know what he’d done. I knew you’d be beside yourself if you knew, so I dug a hole behind the shed and buried the cat. I thought I was doing the right thing in protecting you. You do believe that, don’t you? I meant no harm.’

‘But you let me search for poor Cedric for all those days. I was frantic with worry. You even helped. Or you pretended to look for him. When all the time you knew where he was, he was buried in the garden!’

Rick held on tightly to her hand as she tried to remove it from his grasp. ‘I should have been honest with you, I know. I made a stupid mistake. I’m really sorry. Can you forgive me, please?’

He slowly cast his gaze around the table. ‘Wouldn’t you all have done the same to shield Willow from any needless pain? Wouldn’t you?’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Sunday morning and Tom was doing one of his favourite things; he was riding round the garden on his sit-on mower. With just a few more stripes to add to the lawn he thought how one day he’d be doing this with his daughter on his lap. Just as he and his sister had taken turns to do the same thing with their father when they’d been little.