I lower myself slowly onto the settee. My parents’ deception goes deeper than I thought. I’ve been living in a bubble all this time. Sealed off from the truth. Even when I found that card and they finally had the chance to come clean, they still didn’t tell me. All that stuff Mum said on the phone about Sheena accusing her of being a stuck-up busybody might well have been true, but it wasn’t the whole story, was it? It was nowhere near.

Catherine goes on talking. “I wasn’t meant to know, but I was good at listening in. Ross and I worked it all out. We were an ace team of detectives, the two of us.”

The nauseous feeling that’s been swirling around at the back of my throat suddenly gets a whole lot worse at the mention of Ross’s name. All those times he’s sat with my parents, chatting away with them, drinking Dad’s whiskey, paying compliments to Mum. He hasn’t just deceived me, he’s deceived them as well. All the time, he knew their guilty secret. Even if he does regret tricking me, even if he really does love me now, it’s too much to forgive.

“Mum didn’t want you to be part of our lives, couldn’t bear to be reminded of the betrayal. And that suited your parents, too. They had their precious baby at last, and that was that. They moved away and it was all just swept under the carpet.”

My head is screaming at me that it’s not true, that it’s all a product of her sick, twisted mind, but my heart knows different. My heart knows she’s telling the truth because it all makes perfect sense. The connection I felt with Alice. How instant our friendship was, how profound. The way my parents never approved of us being friends. The conversations we could never have. How odd they’ve been acting lately.

Catherine stares in the direction of the window, her eyes glazed. “I used to pretend she was mine, you know. Alice. Mum got better, eventually, started being a mother again, but Alice belonged to me. She always did. She was the only good thing to come out of that whole sorry mess.”

My lower lip starts to wobble as things fall into place. I know what she’s going to say even before she says it.

Her eyes refocus on me, narrow into hate-filled slits. “Then she met you and everything changed. She didn’t need me anymore. And you can imagine what it did to my mother when she found out who you were. It dragged all that heartache up again, sent her spiraling back down into depression.”

Her fists clench. “And we both know what happened next, don’t we?”