The biggest question around this was the place of Eric Jackson in the story. Mrs Jackson had maintained from the beginning that she was not in touch with her sister. But what if she’d been lying? What if she’d always known where Karen was?

And why lie about her husband’s whereabouts?

Of course, it could be that Eric was the one telling the lies. Perhaps he just liked taking some time out before he came home after a job. Or maybe he rarely came home at all? Maybe the forty-four-year-old marriage Eleanor had so proudly announced didn’t exist in reality.

The biggest question of all was why Eric Jackson had been in Stirling, and so close to his sister-in-law.

59

The rain had come on as she’d left Stirling, a steady grey drizzle that matched her mood. Karen hadn’t driven this road since her mother’s death. How many years ago had that been? She realized she didn’t know, or didn’t want to remember.

Professor Pirie had been right about the detective. He had been kind. She’d felt bad when the professor had explained how hard DS McNab had been working to find her. That was the problem, she acknowledged. It had been since Jack’s illness and death. All that time she’d never considered herself, because she’d had Jack to look after. Now she thought only of herself. What she wanted. What she needed. What might bring her peace.

But mostly of how much she wanted it all to end.

Marge had told her that her recovery would play out like this . . . until, that is, she faced up to the truth, no matter how difficult that was. Until now, she hadn’t known what that truth was, or pretended she hadn’t.

Remember the innocents in all of this, her father had told her. Whispers and innuendo are evil things. If you don’t have something good to say about someone, her mother had told her, then say nothing at all.

Mary didn’t believe that. Mary said what she thought. Mary was braver than she, Karen, could ever be.

And Mary had died because of that, a small voice reminded her.

Her arm burned under its dressing but Karen welcomed the pain, because it kept her focused, both on the road and on what she had to do. Turning on the radio, she almost expected to hear her name again, to discover the police were already looking for her, but there was no mention of it on the hourly news, although she was pretty sure they would be searching for her car.

It took a lot less time and effort than she’d imagined to travel beyond the boundaries that she had set herself. To go back in time.

As she approached the steep hill of her youth, Karen had a sudden memory of travelling down that brae at breakneck speed on her bike, trying to catch Mary up. Then she was back at the entrance to the Catholic school and the playground where she’d first learned to ride the same bike, a second-hand one that she and her dad had painted blue.