“Shit,” Bill said suddenly. “This is just everywhere. The media are crucifying Dudley.”

“Can I have my phone back, please?” Lizzie said. “I want to talk to Dudley. And I really need to tweet how sorry I am to hear about Amelia.” She waited, but Bill was engrossed in scanning his own phone and didn’t move. So was Kat; the brightness of the screens lit up the interior of the car and made Lizzie’s eyes sting.

“I don’t see what fault it is of Dudley’s,” Lizzie said, annoyed that they were both ignoring her. “I mean, he wasn’t even at Oakhangar when it happened, was he? He told me he was going to see friends in Brighton—”

Bill interrupted her. “They’re saying that Amelia may have taken her own life,” he said. “That she threw herself down the stairs because Dudley had told her a couple of weeks ago he was divorcing her. Shit. Fuck. This is a mess.” He shot Lizzie a quick look over his shoulder. “Did you know about the divorce? Did Dudley tell you?”

Lizzie wriggled on the sumptuous leather seat. She had the same feeling she had had on numerous occasions as a child, a sense that something very bad was about to happen and it wasn’t her fault but that was beside the point and she would take the blame anyway.

“He might have mentioned it to me last month...” she muttered.

“Shit, Lizzie!” Bill exploded again. “He mentioned it to you before he told his wife? What is wrong with the pair of you?”

“We’re friends,” Lizzie said mutinously. “We’ve been friends since I was six years old, Bill, so it’s no wonder we’re close, is it? Dudley confides in me.”

Bill muttered another expletive under his breath. “It’s unhealthy, Lizzie,” he said. “Frankly you both come across as weird and needy.”

Lizzie ignored him and looked out of the window. It was dark outside the car now, the last vestiges of evening light fading from the sky. They were driving fast, on a motorway somewhere but she had no idea where they were or where they were going. No one had told her. Suddenly she felt so tired. They moved her around like a piece on a chessboard and never told her a damn thing.

Bill turned in his seat so that he could look at her properly. Lizzie felt a rush of irritation that another lecture would be forthcoming and kept her gaze firmly averted from his. “Did you also know that Amelia had been in hospital?” Bill asked, his voice deceptively soft. “Apparently she was suffering from depression and she’d become addicted to prescription painkillers. She was taking them for migraines or something, and seeing a whole raft of specialists.” He shook his head irritably. “Whatever. Anyway, Dudley had been paying for her rehab at Melton Abbey until last week when she went home to Oakhangar.”

Lizzie hunched deeper into her jacket. She felt a coldness seeping through her body, a mind-numbing, bone-crunching chill like frost setting hard. She had had no idea that Amelia was ill. She thought about the paralysing sense of despair that depression brought with it, the flat darkness that stretched forever, the lack of any sense of joy and the hideous loneliness. She knew what it felt like to be on one side of that plate glass pane so that nothing, no sound, no sight, no love, could touch her. She’d lived with that, off and on, for so many years, ever since her mother’s death. It seemed she had more in common with Amelia than she had known.