The last of the Hard Gum slips down my throat. I slide my eyes to the side to look at Alice’s face. How come she knows all this stuff and I don’t? I think of the way Dave Farley’s hands rested in the small of her back when he danced with her. How close together they were. No, she can’t have done. She would have told me, wouldn’t she? That nasty feeling I get when I think of Alice having a boyfriend makes me clench my jaw.

Suddenly, her expression changes and I look back at the car. The man in the back-to-front baseball cap has started convulsing in the driver’s seat. I stare at him, transfixed. What on earth…?

Alice nudges me in the ribs with her elbow. “Think you’ve got your answer, Lizzie. I make that just under five minutes.”

30

NOW

“This is meant to be the finest example of Jacobean domestic architecture in the country,” Catherine says. She’s reading from her phone. “And now they’ve got a pizza restaurant in the minstrels’ gallery.”

She laughs, and for one startling moment it’s as though Alice has come back as a fully grown woman. I never realized before how alike the two of them were. Their voices, their laughs, their mannerisms. She has the same high cheekbones as well. The same olive-colored skin and dark, glossy hair.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, because agreeing to meet for a coffee was only ever intended as a means to quiz her about that reporter, but instead of going straight home as soon as we’d finished, I’ve somehow allowed myself to be led round the park and entertained by her, as if we’re old friends. Now we’re standing in front of Charlton House. I stare at the imposing red-brick building, trying to work out what’s going on here.

A gust of wind blows my hair over my eyes and I reach into my pocket for a scrunchie, gather my wayward curls into a ponytail.

“You look so different now,” Catherine says. “Long hair suits you.”

I spy on her from the corner of my eye. The old Catherine would probably have followed this up with something horrible like “Especially when it covers your face.” But this new, nicer Catherine lets the compliment hang in the air and I find myself thanking her.

“Do you ever think of the old days, in Riley Road?” she asks.

The mention of Riley Road does something weird to my insides.

“I think of them all the time,” she says. “I almost went back to see our old house a few years ago.”

“Oh, so your parents moved, then?”

“Yes, they live in a little village in North Devon now. Moving to the countryside was good for them. Especially Mum.”