‘It’s just material stuff, Mum,’ Dylan said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Doesn’t matter?’ Mairi said, shaking her head. ‘Fine.’ She strode out into the hallway. Everyone went quiet as they watched her go to the lighted candles in the main window there. ‘No light needed to welcome guests then, no Christmas candles,’ she said as snuffed out the lights, then shoved past us to get back into the living room and snuff those candles out too. ‘You can all go home now, leave your mum and dad in the darkness. You’re not welcome here any more, no one is.’

‘Oh, Mum, come on,’ Glenn said.

‘Yeah, don’t be silly, Mum,’ Alison chimed in.

Everyone started talking at once.

‘What happened to Eleanor?’ I whispered. ‘What happened to Eleanor?’ I said, louder this time. Everyone went quiet and looked at me. ‘I know she died out on the loch. But why was she running?’

‘She was afraid,’ Dylan said as Cole squeezed his eyes shut.

‘Dylan,’ his mother said in a low warning voice.

‘Jesus, Mum, I’m sick of the lies, aren’t you?’ he shouted back. He quickly turned back to me. ‘Eleanor considered herself a bit of a sleuth. She found evidence the land was her family’s. A nurse who was present when her great-grandfather died witnessed our great-grandmother forcing his signature to hand the estate over to the McCluskys.’

Heather shook her head, putting her hands over her ears. ‘I can’t hear this.’

Dylan took my hand, looking into my eyes. ‘Eleanor confronted us about it. Wanted to hear it from my mother’s mouth before telling her parents. We knew the land would be taken from us if she took the evidence to them. Cole tried to get it off her.’

Cole looked up. His eyes were filled with tears. He shook his head at Dylan but it was half-hearted, like he too wanted the truth out.

‘She ran and Cole ran after her,’ Dylan continued. ‘She stepped onto the frozen lake.’

‘And she fell in,’ Cole said, his blue eyes on the loch, tears falling down his cheeks. ‘I still remember the sound of the ice breaking, the impact of her body on the freezing water.’

‘Why didn’t you go in for her?’ I asked.

‘For a stupid moment, I wanted to teach her a lesson,’ he replied, face anguished. ‘I let her panic. Just for a minute. I – I was going to go in. But it all happened so fast. Too fast.’ He put his head in his hands and moaned. ‘By the time I actually got to her, it was too late.’

‘Me too,’ Dylan said.

I turned to him. ‘You were there?’

‘I saw it happen from my window. I ran down the stairs.’