Kat looks at Becca. She can’t believe that she once thought she looked like Ellie. Where Ellie is closed, Becca is open. And where Beth wears a mask, Becca radiates authenticity. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait,’ Kat whispers. ‘I had some other guilt to get rid of first.’

‘And did you?’

Kat smiles, the tears all dried up now. ‘Yes,’ she answers. ‘I did.’

Epilogue

Epilogue

January 2022

The service is over now. Beth’s dad has been sent to his final resting place, and he should leave too, Simon thinks. The girls are with his parents in Hertfordshire. Their house in Wandsworth is on the market, and his mum is dropping heavy hints that he and the girls should move closer to them. But for now, they have school tomorrow, and it will be a long drive home in the rain.

But he can’t leave the crematorium yet. Not without introducing himself to Beth’s mother – a stranger to him for all these years – and showing her the precious photos that he keeps in his wallet.

Beth left as soon as the service finished, led away, back to her new home on remand in Bronzefield prison, flanked on both sides by prison officers. She didn’t cry at all during the service. She sat blank-faced, looking straight ahead. If you weren’t watching carefully, you might think she didn’t move at all. But Simon noticed the way her hands slid and scratched as her father’s coffin disappeared behind the curtain.

The investigation is ongoing. DC Stone has phoned Simon a couple of times, but he barely listens to the detective. Beth has been charged with the serious assault of Mark Sullivan and Kat Wilson. They’re hoping the footage of her crouching down by Jon Smith’s side will be enough to prove she was responsible for his death too, the passer-by who put filming the event above helping suddenly labelled a hero for first compelling Beth to phone for an ambulance, and then providing the vital evidence to prove her guilt. The police video analysts have already determined that she picked the needle off the ground, and their working theory is that she used it to inject air into Jon’s vein after he had injected himself with heroin, when he was pliant. Thames Valley police have decided there’s not enough evidence to charge Beth with her brother’s murder, but she’s paying in other ways for that.