He shook his head, but said nothing.

‘I wish I’d asked you there and then, but I lost my nerve.’ Fresh tears came, spilling down my cheeks. ‘I wish I’d just come right out with it and confronted you. Oh God, maybe if I had done that then Izzy would still be alive.’

Rowan came and sat down next to me. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Kate.’

‘All I knew was that it was one of you three. Actually, at first I thought it was you, Rowan.’

‘I know. But you were wrong.’ She threw a sharp look at her own husband. ‘And so were you, Russ.’

‘I know that now,’ I said. ‘Then it seemed like maybe it was Jen because there was a video that Daniel shot which caught them together, going for long walks into the village, that kind of thing. But I wanted solid proof, so I got into Sean’s phone when he was sleeping, pretended to be him and asked this CoralGirl to meet down in the woods. But it wasn’t Jen that turned up. It was Izzy.’

‘Jesus,’ Russ said under his breath. ‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago. Tuesday. When Izzy turned up in the woods I didn’t know what to do because it looked like I was wrong again. It totally threw me off. Then I got back to the villa and Sean had wrecked his phone deliberately by jumping into the pool with it in his pocket, so I wouldn’t be able to confront him.’

Rowan said, ‘Is this true, Sean?’

He simply shook his head, eyes fixed on the floor.

Please just tell me. No more deception. No more lies.

‘Tell me, Sean,’ I said, pleading with him. ‘I have to know the truth.’

‘No.’ His voice was barely above a whisper.

‘I don’t believe you. Why can’t you even look at me?’

He lifted his head to face me, his eyes bloodshot and brimming with fresh tears. ‘I said no. It’s not true.’

I shook my head. Even now he couldn’t come clean. I wondered what had happened to the man I married, how long ago it had gone wrong between us.

And look at us now: wronged wife and desperate lover. De facto suspects in the death of our dear friend.

‘It doesn’t matter if you deny it,’ I said. ‘Izzy was about to tell me herself, she asked me for a private talk after dinner tonight. Something personal. She actually started telling me, and then everything went a bit crazy with the fire and—’

‘And now here we are,’ Rowan said quietly.

‘I didn’t do anything to Izzy,’ Sean blurted suddenly. ‘I swear. I would never have hurt her.’

Jennifer gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘I know that, Sean, we all know that.’

Do we?