‘Don’t worry; I won’t be holding you to it,’ he said evenly, but there was no missing the fact that his voice sounded as if he’d stepped not just physically from the phone, but also emotionally further away from her than she could ever remember.

‘Right, well, you know where I am if…’ Oh, God, could she dig the hole any deeper – it sounded as if she was yelling at him: Come get me; I’m truly desperate.

‘Thanks, Liv,’ he said before hanging up.

‘Yes, thanks,’ she said to the dead phone in her hand and, in some strange way, Liv thought she hadn’t felt this completely bereft in a very long time.

But it was madness, she kept telling herself as she tried to settle down for the night. She and Pete – it was ridiculous. He’d been Rachel’s best friend. And now he was her best friend, apart from Maya, and you can’t count sisters, because they don’t get a choice in being your friend, do they? She took down the framed photograph of the three of them, smiling, happy faces on a group holiday to Corfu, so many years ago, before they’d even really grown up. She’d found it a few days earlier, buried under a pile of Eddie’s clothes.

A thought occurred to her then. It struck her like a tsunami of realisation. If Rachel had lived, wouldn’t she have eventually married Pete? The thought quickly took root and somewhere in the very back of her mind, even if she didn’t want to acknowledge it, she knew, it was forming into something far more substantial than just a possibility. Perhaps when Pete lost Rachel he lost his soul mate?

It was only as she fell asleep that night that another thought settled on her. What if she had gotten it all wrong? What if she had been in love with Pete all along, but Pete had always been Rachel’s? That was how it was meant to be, wasn’t it?

14

There had been no sleep. In fact, Liv felt as if she hadn’t slept in months and she might never sleep soundly again. Instead, she’d lain in bed and was sure she’d counted out each second before she figured that light might be cracking open on the horizon. She imagined it, a thin streak at first, breaking open a new day.

A terrible day.

There was only one thing she had to do today and that was go down to the village and talk to Eddie. Confront him, Maya corrected her. But really, all Liv wanted was the truth, wasn’t it? She wasn’t so sure. Ideally, she’d have liked a palatable version of the truth.