I rewound the tape and pressed play again, my finger poised over the pause button.

On the camera’s little screen, Sean moved in for the embrace again.

I hit pause. There. There it was. A flash of long blonde hair, a face caught in profile for a fraction of a second. A face I knew only too well.

Jennifer.

Chapter 36

36

It didn’t make sense. I had been fully expecting to see Rowan caught in the video with Sean. It was Rowan who was having an affair – according to her husband – and she was the one who’d had Sean’s wedding ring, who’d whispered to him at the beach. It should have been Rowan in the video, but it wasn’t.

Another thought edged out from the very darkest corner of my mind.

Perhaps it wasn’t just Rowan. Perhaps it was Rowan and Jennifer, somehow working together behind my back. Christ, if I was going to consider that, then maybe it was all of them, all three of them involved in something as a trio? And I was the one excluded, the one left out in the cold, just like at school, always left on the edge of everything, last to be picked, always on the outside looking in and—

Stop. That was pure paranoia. But I was struggling, more and more, to discern the line between what was real and what was not.

I took out my phone, zoomed the camera in on the little video screen, and snapped a picture of the freeze-framed image. Then I ejected the tape and tucked it at the back of my bedside drawer.

I had a feeling I might need it, sooner rather than later.

*

The sky was fading to a heavy blue-black, the brightest stars already pinpricks of light against the darkness. With dinner out of the way I sat down next to my daughter on a bench in the garden, the white stone still holding a ghost of warmth from the day.

‘I took care of that video, Lucy.’

She nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘And your brother says sorry. He won’t do it again.’

‘Yeah, right.’ She sniffed. ‘Until the next time.’

‘I made him promise.’

She nodded again, but said nothing.

I turned on the bench slightly, so I was facing towards her. ‘What was it about it that really upset you, Luce? Daniel’s done it before, you know what he’s like. He does it to me, too, and your dad. But you’ve never reacted like this before.’

She shrugged, once. ‘I just don’t like being filmed.’

‘Is that all? Seems like there’s a bit more to it than that.’

She was silent, fingers twisting a long strand of her golden-blonde hair round and around, just like she had done since she was very small.

I rested my fingertips on her arm. ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’