I can’t hang about for too long because Stuart will worry. He may even ask the woman—I still can’t remember her name—to check up on me. The thought of them talking about me, of her telling Stuart where she met me, me having to come up with yet another lie on the spot, is enough to drive me out of the toilets. I wish lies had a shelf life.

I emerge, still feeling sick. There is no sign of her.

I sit down opposite Stuart and sip the tea.

“Are you all right?” he says.

“No.”

I check that no one is in earshot, maybe a little too obviously, but nonetheless, I lower my voice and blurt out all I’ve discovered about Nina, a lot more crudely than I’d intended.

He listens. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t doubt me. But most strangely of all, he isn’t shocked. It dawns on me why. I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t know.

He knew. All along.

Twenty-Three

“So, Camilla cracked,” he says. “She’s been avoiding my calls.”

“You’ve both been keeping this from me?”

“I didn’t know if you knew or not,” he says. “I didn’t think so, but you can be a bit of a dark horse. But when I saw the two of you yesterday acting suspiciously in the woods, well, it wasn’t hard to figure it out.”

“Of course I didn’t know. As if I’d keep quiet about something as monumental as this!”

He shrugs. “You’d be surprised.”

“I can’t keep this to myself, I just can’t. It’s too...big. It makes me feel complicit, like one day someone who knew Charlie will come knocking and hold me responsible.”

He leans over the table and grips my arm.

“You’ve no choice but to keep quiet,” he says. “Just like I’ve had to. Emily and Felix will not be known as the children of a murderer.”

“You’re hurting me.”

He eases his grip.

“What do you mean, a murderer?”

“Sorry, a dramatic choice of words. You know what I mean.”

“But—”

“But nothing. You’re in shock. It dies down, believe me. It becomes normalized, something you can eventually push to the back of your mind. It may sound unpalatable now, but sadly, it’s true.”

I take a large gulp. The unfamiliar sensation of alcohol slides down the back of my throat, hits me hard. Or is it just wishful thinking? I want to drink it all. I crave the welcoming pull of drunken oblivion. I want to write down my thoughts, one by one and untangle them. I want to see my mum, my dad, Christian.

His tone softens. “Think of the future, Marie. Our future. Our children’s future. Nina paid a high enough price, believe me. Sometimes I wonder if it was the guilt that made her ill. I appreciate that’s not how it works, but it does cross my mind from time to time.”

I almost forget to breathe as I struggle to take it all in, for my mind to play catch-up.