He wasn’t hurting her, was he? He was helping her keep the secret. I killed the one person she relied on. Killed him for no reason at all.

56.

PAUL

It was ten p.m. when Paul finally limped toward home. His body felt broken, his mind lagging. He’d discharged himself from the hospital against medical advice, and Yvette had driven him to her place, lent him some of her partner’s clothes, then dropped him off, at his request, around the corner from his house.

Leaving him to try to come to terms with a new, almost incomprehensible truth.

Half of him still could not believe what Yvette had told him as she’d grasped his wrists in the hospital corridor a few hours before. The other half had to acknowledge that her revelation made sense of everything. Shadowed thoughts that had been knocking at the back of his brain for years had emerged into the light as she’d spoken. But that hadn’t made it any easier to take in.

She wanted to escape, Yvette had said. From Daniel, from his hold over her, from whatever he may or may not have done to Billie. And . . .

And from me, Paul had finished for her, still not fully comprehending.

Yvette had looked down. In a way, yes. She thought you’d try to follow her or track her down if you ever knew. She just wanted to disappear, and we thought we owed her that. A new life and some protection.

Breathlessness had swept across Paul’s chest as he’d begun to understand.

Nathalie hadn’t killed herself.

Nathalie was alive.

I wanted to tell you, Yvette had said. So many times, I almost did.

Paul had realized then what had been gnawing at him, almost subconsciously, for a long time. The fact that nobody ever went near Chainwell Woods anymore, not since what had happened to Billie, yet Glover had told him that Nathalie had been found hanging from a tree by a local dog-walker. It was a clichéd, lazy detail in the story. It had never sat quite right, but Paul hadn’t grasped why until now.

Glover knows? he’d asked Yvette.

She’d nodded. It suited him to get Nathalie out of the picture. One less person to expose the whole “scandal.” But I didn’t go along with it for his sake. It was for Nathalie . . . and you.

Me?

You had to let her go, Paul. I knew you never would as long as you thought she was somewhere out there.

The words echoed in his head now: somewhere out there.