Jack nodded, grateful for his understanding. ‘I clung to Alex because she was the only person who could possibly know how it felt to have your family snatched away from you, the only 272person left alive who knew what I’d done and understood why, but even she wasn’t who I thought she was. It was all a lie.’

‘So you killed her in the heat of the moment?’ Penrose said, wishing it to be true.

‘No, not then, but I told her I was going to come here and tell you the truth – you and Hartley. She just laughed.’

‘She didn’t believe you?’

‘She said that Hartley knew already. Apparently she told him all those years ago while we were staying at the vicarage, and he promised to protect her. It would be impossible for me to tell you how much I hated her in that moment – how much I hated them both. I’ve spent my whole life resenting something I didn’t understand, but I’ve never felt a rage like that.’

Could it really be true that Richard Hartley had conspired to keep the truth of that day a secret? Penrose wondered. It was hard to contemplate, and the vicar’s comments the night before had seemed genuine enough, yet he also knew how difficult it would have been for him to betray the girl’s trust if he had been put in that impossible position; he would have done it, but it would have destroyed him, and the Hartleys had known both children much better than he had. In fact, he had always wondered why they didn’t adopt the orphans themselves; perhaps now he knew the answer. ‘When did you confront Richard Hartley?’ he asked. ‘You were obviously the past that he hadn’t expected to see. Did he recognise you?’

‘No, not at all. I think she did, though.’

‘Mrs Hartley?’

Naylor nodded. ‘She kept looking at me over dinner, like she knew me and couldn’t place me, but nobody took any notice. She obviously didn’t say anything to him, because it 273came as a shock when I told him. I did it as we were leaving the smoking room together, when you’d gone off to find Marlene. He’d just been telling us that he was going to preach a sermon about love, if you remember, so I thought I’d show him what love was really capable of.’

‘You asked to meet him in the church?’

‘Yes. After all that talk about the chair and St Michael, it seemed right that someone should judge him at the end. He spent his life deciding who to damn and who to save …’

‘Not consciously,’ Penrose argued. ‘He was trying to do his best. He didn’t deserve to die, especially not like that.’

He could see that his words had disappointed Jack. ‘Neither did my mother,’ he retaliated angrily, ‘and she certainly didn’t deserve to be blamed for it – so who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong? Whose secrets are kept and whose reputations are destroyed? Whose lives are worth protecting, and whose can be thrown away? Everybody passed a judgement that day, including you, and some of us are still living with it.’