Grace curled up on the sofa with her legs tucked underneath her. She studied the photograph. It was the only surviving image of her and Nathan on their wedding day. Not one of the cheesy pictures the expensive photographer had made them pose for, but one taken by her Aunt Helen that they’d been oblivious to at the time. They were walking down the church steps with people milling about in the background. Nathan had his arm around her waist, his face buried in her hair as though he’d just said something in her ear. He was smiling, and Grace’s head was thrown back in laughter.

As a child, Grace had loved to look at old photographs, particularly of her mum. She always imagined that the image was a piece of her mum’s consciousness, frozen in time. And that if she went back to that place the image was taken, a part of her mum would still be there. She wondered the same about the photograph of her and Nathan. Did a part of them still dwell in that churchyard? The happy couple who thought that all they needed was each other. She used to look at it often. It reminded her that she wasn’t crazy. That once upon a time, Nathan had loved her as much as she’d loved him. It was the life that could have been.

Grace rubbed the pad of her thumb across the image of the two figures on the glossy paper. She hadn’t felt the need to look at it in a long time. If she was honest, it was too confronting. Sometimes it was like looking at a different person, one she no longer recognized when she looked in the mirror. She’d been a good person once.

Walking into the kitchen, Grace rummaged around her cutlery drawer until she found the old packet of matches. As she opened the back door to her garden, the warm air swept over her. Lighting one of the matches, she held it to the corner of the photograph until it caught fire. Dropping it to the floor, she watched as the orange flames burned effortlessly through the paper, until there was nothing left.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Twenty Years Earlier

‘You all right, mate?’ Ben laughed. ‘You look a bit pale like.’

‘Fuck off!’ Nathan smiled, flicking the remains of his cigarette at him.

They were standing outside the church. Nathan stuffed his hands into his pockets to stop himself from fidgeting as he started to kick at a stone which was coming loose on the church steps.

Nathan had known Ben since they were thirteen. They’d been in a kids’ home together when Nathan was sent there after a foster placement broke down. That’s what the social worker said, anyway. Broke down – that was putting it fucking mildly.