‘Behind the door. There was Sarah’s … and these other girls. Three, four of them, I wasn’t quite sure who.’

‘Did you go in?’

‘I couldn’t. They were … talking together, giggling.’

My chest aches as I picture her. Awkward. Alone. ‘So what happened?’

Chloe gets to her feet, heaving her luggage up off the floor. I get to my feet as well, my head spinning from the effort.

‘I stood out there in the corridor until the bell went, waiting for her and the girls to come out. I suppose I was going to beg her to take me back.’

They call Chloe’s flight again, and I steady myself with a hand on the back of the cold plastic chair.

‘She was shocked, of course, to see me there. But then she smiled. Told me she was ready to make up. Maybe she didn’t realize how long I’d been standing there. Maybe she didn’t realize what I’d heard. And seen.’

‘Seen …?’ My mind flashes to those three plates, set out. Empty, waiting, speckled with flies.

Chloe fastens her jacket around her. It’s too tight; it pinches her frame. ‘Seen what was in there.’

My head rings. The hollowness in my stomach expands. ‘You mean, who was in there.’

Chloe lets out a sigh, shaking her head.

‘No, I mean what. Inside that classroom? Jennifer, there was nobody else there.’

Chapter 31

All of these falsehoods, all these charades. It’s as if I’m peeling back layer after layer, and what is it I’m finding underneath?

Chloe tells me that Sarah was in foster care; that was what she’d later found out. Foster care.

So much for Family Is The Dearest Thing.

All these impressions of Sarah I’ve collected, how much of any of that was real? Marianne admired her and Alastair loved her, but now it seems there was an entire fabrication that Sarah wove around her whole life; what she presented to the world was a smoke-and-mirrors game. I’m shocked, dazed and yet … and yet … doesn’t it somehow all begin to make sense? The image I’ve held of Sarah has never joined up with what I saw in that flat, and in the face of Chloe’s words it begins to fracture, disintegrate. Making way … for what? What was she running from, what was she hiding? Underneath the façade, what on earth was going on?

They are giving the last call for Chloe’s flight; she has to go, and I need to get out of this claustrophobic airport. Chloe says she’ll text me if she remembers the cousin’s name, but I can’t help thinking that will end up being a lie too. I leave her in a hurried, awkward rush and head back to the train station, everything I’ve learned spinning round in my head.