I told him it was impossible, that I couldn’t go home cos I didn’t trust him any more.

‘Don’t trust me?’ he cried, throwing his hands in the air. ‘What are you talking about? I’m the only person you can trust. You think this lot are to be trusted, the religious criminals?’

He gestured to Isobel and Steve. I heard Isobel give a snort. It was probably the first and only time she’d ever been called a criminal. They both looked nervous though. I was still holding the gun and Sarge was a menacing sight.

‘Just come back to the house, pet,’ he repeated, holding his hand out towards me. ‘Please. You shouldn’t be out here.’

I didn’t reply, just stood there staring him down. I’d never done that before, never held his gaze like that, and it seemed to scare him because he quickly looked away.

After a few moments I found my voice. I told him that I’d taken his book and read it and that I’d discovered what he’d done all those years ago, that he’d lied to me about my mother, that she never died in the desert but had lived. That he had snatched me from her when I was just a few months old and brought me to the house on the lake. I told him that I’d seen the letters she’d written begging him to return me to her and that he had kept those letters tucked inside that book, hidden from me, with all the other secrets. And for that, I cried, I could never ever forgive him.

‘Please,’ he said, his eyes filling with tears. ‘Please, pet. Just come home and we can talk about this. But not here, eh? Not here.’

‘It’s too late,’ I said defiantly. ‘You’ve lost me. Do you understand? You’re nothing to me now. Nothing.’

I looked up at him once I’d finished my rant and his whole body seemed to crumple. He staggered backwards, his hand clutched to his chest.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, no, pet. You’ve got it all wrong.’

I told him that I’d read my mother’s letters and that it was clear what had happened. There was no mistaking it. He had taken me from her in the summer of 1991 and removed me to Rowan Isle House where he has kept me captive ever since.

He lurched towards me when I said this, shouting that the letters were a load of nonsense, that they weren’t even written by my mother but by her sister, a good-for-nothing woman who was after a pay-out.

I knew then that he was desperate, clutching at straws, because in all the letters I’d read there had been no mention of money. There had just been a searing sadness pouring out of my mother. She wanted her child back. It was as simple as that.

‘She never died in the desert, did she?’ I said, keeping my eyes fixed on his. ‘You just took me from her. How did you manage it? Didn’t she try to stop you?’