There had been that strange moment of ecstasy when Katrina had first begun to speak, the sense of their old intimacy restored, and Fiona had leaned forward and said, “You know, you can tell me anything.” It was only when she thought about it properly afterwards that Fiona had begun to feel the first stirrings of dismay. Wasn’t it odd for Katrina to have cut her off for years and then to suddenly waltz into her house and sit there sipping tea and dropping bombshells? Fiona had thought Katrina would come by again, but she did not. If she had, if she had come by just one more time to confide in Fiona, then perhaps things might have been different.

I am being used, Fiona had thought—just as she always had been. Picked up and put down and picked up and put down again. It was not fair. Katrina had always done what was best for herself, never with any concern for others, and now here she was again, her selfishness directed towards her own husband this time, and her own children whom she planned on taking so far away. “He can’t know,” Katrina had said. She had said, “I’m afraid of him.”

A man like John!

“I need your help,” Katrina had said. “Just to get on to the ferry.”

Fiona, unutterably shocked, had said, “O.K.”

Reaching the track to her house, she turned the car abruptly. Then she was speeding past that awful place—how could the Dougdales manage to live there?—and towards the safety of her own driveway. She pulled up, but remained where she was, unwilling to unbuckle her seatbelt and go inside until she was sure she was composed.

She had thought about Katrina’s request endlessly, painfully, for a week afterwards. But Katrina acted as if nothing had happened between them, speaking so casually, so distantly, to Fiona in the shop a few days later. She did not come by again. And, “Forget about what I said before,” she had told Fiona quickly, when they were alone for a moment outside church the following week. Fiona hadn’t even had a chance to reply before Heather came up and Katrina turned away to greet her, leaving Fiona standing by herself.

She did not like to feel she had been used.

In the gathering darkness, Fiona took a packet of tissues from her bag to wipe her face. It was lucky she wore no make-up—there was no mascara to run. You’d have to look closely at her to know she’d been crying, and Gavin never looked closely. Finally, she undid her seatbelt and reached out to open the door.