‘I’m so sorry for bringing it up, Kate,’ she continued. ‘I just think it’s better if we don’t mention any of this to the police. It gives you . . . motive, I guess?’

‘I never hurt her!’

‘I know, but that’s exactly what I mean. If we tell the police about all of this, it will send them on some kind of wild-goose chase that none of us wants. We’d all hate for Izzy’s family to have her name dragged into that kind of tabloid nonsense.’

‘Agreed,’ Rowan said.

I swiped at my tears with the heel of my palm. ‘I never even saw her down there in the woods when it was all happening.’

Jennifer patted my knee. ‘No one did, Kate. It’s not your fault.’

Odette, still sitting on Rowan’s lap, whispered something to her mother. Rowan frowned.

‘Say that again, darling.’

Odette shook her head vigorously.

‘Come on, darling. It’s OK, I promise.’

Odette put her mouth close to her mother’s ear and whispered again, louder this time, but not loud enough for the rest of us to hear.

‘Are you sure, darling?’ Rowan said softly. ‘Super super sure?’

Odette nodded. Just a tiny movement, almost invisible, a dip of her little chin without breaking eye contact with her mother.

‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Does she want to go down to the games room with the other children?’

‘No,’ Rowan said, her face darkening. ‘She said she – she saw something. When she was hiding in the tree trunk she saw Izzy at the edge of the bluff. With someone.’

I flinched as a distant rumble of thunder rolled across the sky.

‘Who?’ I said. ‘Who was she with?’

Odette looked at us, all of us, her big hazel-green eyes seeming to see us for the first time. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her hand and pointed.

Chapter 74

74

My husband tensed beside me, his hands bunched into fists, the muscles in his arms hard against mine.

There is a witness to what you did, Sean. A real live witness.

But would they take the word of a five-year-old girl against a grown man?

Absently, I wondered how he was going to react when he was accused, if I would visit my husband in a French prison, or if the kids would want to visit. Where would it be? How long might the sentence be? Or would he be extradited back to the UK?

Odette didn’t blink. She didn’t speak, or cry, or hide her face.

She just pointed.

Her finger shaking, her whole hand shaking, her index finger singled out one person sitting on the sofa opposite.

Jennifer.

Time seemed to slow down as all eyes in the room turned towards her.

‘What?’ Jennifer said, a confused half-smile on her face.