‘When they returned to France, they told their parents they were married. Valentina’s mother went very white, Anouk says. She nearly fainted. This secret she had held on to for so many years. She had to tell them.’

‘And they ignored her? Did they not believe it was true? Maybe it isn’t true,’ Beth suggested, but felt the flimsiness of her optimism. The weight of certainty hung heavily in the air between them. The truth giving off its own peculiar pulse.

‘It was too late. Valentina was already pregnant with Anouk.’ Her voice flat, a faint hint of despair.

‘When did you find this out?’ Beth asked in a small voice.

‘The day before Anouk left for Canada, she told me everything – how she had found our grandparents in Croatia, how they had explained it to her. Everything made sense somehow. All those years of moving from place to place like we were running from something. The strange way my parents looked at each other sometimes.’

Beth felt the mattress hard beneath the seat of her bones. Corinne’s revelation appalled her. She had no idea of what to do with this information, what words of consolation she might offer. It went too deep. A betrayal so profound it infected the blood.

A shiver went through her, of excitement, of fear. She felt Corinne’s eyes on her, felt the dry heat of her skin, their bloods jumping and communicating through their held hands, an air of watchfulness in the quiet house around them.

‘Now it’s your turn,’ Corinne said solemnly. It was not a request, and Beth felt the immutability of the pact they’d entered into, the sanctity of truth required after Corinne’s own brave admission.

Beth’s heart began thrumming away, nerves prickling over her skin as Corinne fixed her with a direct gaze, eyes wide and compelling. Beth had no choice, and part of her had been yearning to tell.

‘Tell me a secret,’ Corinne whispered. ‘The one thing you could never tell anyone.’

SUMMER

The girls are dead.

The knowledge of this sits inside me, pulsing with its very own heartbeat – a living, breathing thing.

‘I think I’m in shock,’ I tell the detective.

She is a young woman with a pale face and amber eyes. Cassins is her name.

‘I haven’t cried yet. I don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t—’