He raises his cane and light from the window flashes on the silver top. The Devil is in the detail. Time slows. Tap. Tap. The man in the lake. The voices arguing in Eva’s head. The doll. The rose. Marina holds up her hand and it breaks the blow. With her other hand she shoves him, hard, in the chest, and he staggers.

‘Victor said you were gullible. The two of them together cleaned you out.’

She is taunting him again, hoping that he will break. That he will crack open like a nut and tell her everything.

There is a sound. A figure comes into the room. Eva. Thin and shivering in her nightgown, pale as a spectre, like a little girl.

Something clicks inside Marina’s head.

She was a little girl who saw something terrible – something so terrible that she has forced herself to forget. Only you can never forget. You can only compartmentalise. Shut memories away in a section of your mind and slam the door. Until along comes a trigger or a series of triggers, clawing like finger nails to open that door.

Eva speaks. Startled, Kenneth turns. Marina takes her chance, thrusting him away, moving out of reach.

‘I saw you,’ she says, her voice shaking.

Marina is watching, heart thumping. She understands what is happening. She understands exactly. Eva has remembered.

‘You hurt Connie. It’s your fault she didn’t come back.’

Marina’s chest is tight. She puts her hand to her throat. Kenneth is ashen. He is crumbling, she thinks, like an ancient statue. Soon there will be nothing of him left.

‘You argued about money,’ Eva says more calmly. ‘You pushed her, and the door crashed against the wall. I was so small and so afraid, I went to find my mother, but she was playing the piano and crying, like she always did, so I went to my room because I had wet myself and I changed my clothes. When I got back to the landing, I saw you coming out alone, holding the baby. You did something to Connie and then you stole her baby.’

Eva stops and there is a stillness in the room.

Marina speaks to Kenneth. ‘Is that what happened?’ Her voice sounds far away. She clasps her hands together and feels herself shivering, teeth chattering.

His eyes are watering so badly now, it’s as if he is weeping. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I didn’t kill her.’

Hope pulses through Marina. Her mother is alive. She can still track her down. ‘So what happened?’

His body droops. ‘She was dying, anyway.’

Dismay twists inside Marina’s stomach. She is wrong. There is no hope.

He staggers backwards and drops into the armchair and Marina sees him for what he is: what he has become. He is a man given up. Old and tired and plagued by guilt. He will confess, she thinks, but what will he confess to? What has he done?