“And nor did you. She told me the next day. I caught her trying to forge Mum’s signature on a note to Miss Nandy. Alice was never a very good liar.” She narrows her eyes. “Unlike you.” Her face is hard and unforgiving.

“And you!” I retort. “You’ve lied to me ever since the party. And Ross has lied to me even longer.”

Something is starting to unfold in my brain. A dawning realization. His anger when I told him I’d offered her our spare room. His awkwardness the whole time she was here. The look on his face yesterday evening, when the three of us stood on the landing. And last night, after the phone call from the nursing home. The way he talked to me about his past while we lay in bed.

It might just be wishful thinking. Desperate thinking. For all I know, he’s as mad as she is, or why else would he have deceived me like this? But a small voice keeps telling me that, despite everything he’s done, he isn’t like her. He’s different.

“He doesn’t know you’re here, does he? You didn’t leave of your own accord. He told you to go.”

Her face changes. She looks defensive all of a sudden. I’m right. It hasn’t all been a pretense for him. He feels something for me. I knew it. That’s why he wanted me to go to Aberdeen with him. I feel a sudden pang of regret. He’ll be mid-flight by now, his legs stretched out under the seat in front, plugged in to his iPad. That’s why he unpacked my rucksack and put it back on top of the wardrobe, why he didn’t ask me where I was going. Because he didn’t want me to remember. He didn’t want me to go.

And that’s why Catherine is here now. That’s why she’s let herself in. Because she knows she’s lost him.

I fight back nausea at the thought of what she might do. If she blames me for Alice’s death, she’ll blame me for losing Ross, too. And now she has me exactly where she wants me. Trapped in the web she’s so meticulously and stealthily spun.

“It’s only because of the baby,” she says. “He doesn’t want you.”

My hand moves instinctively to my belly, and so do her eyes.

“You’re just like your mother. A filthy bitch in heat.”

I reel at her words. “What’s any of this got to do with my mother?”

“Everything!” She spits the word out. “It’s got everything to do with her.” She fixes me with an icy stare. “You really have no idea, do you?”

I stare back at her. “No idea about what?”

She inhales, sharply. “Your mother wanted something my mum already had.”