I can’t take my eyes from it, but I don’t want to see. I’m scared. I’m like that child again, nine years old and not understanding why they were putting my mammy in a hole in the ground. That wasn’t heaven, either. They said she was going to heaven. Not to a cold, wet hole in the ground. I had stood there, aged nine, shaking so badly with fear while people wept and wailed around me, desperate to tell them they were making a mistake but trying to be a good girl, just like Granny had asked me.

When the first shovelful of soil was dropped onto the top of her coffin, I had been so scared that I had, to my eternal shame, wet myself. Soaked through those black tights bought just for the occasion. The pee running into my shiny patent shoes. I was scared and humiliated.

And now, her grave open, the thought of where she is, how she is, that he will be placed on top of her remains – it makes me want to do whatever it takes to stop them.

But Alex is pulling me backwards. Using all of his strength. And still everyone stares. And still Ciara is weeping on Stella’s shoulder and Kathleen is glaring at me while Marie just looks lost.

And none of them, not one of them, has the right to be more upset than me.

Chapter Forty-Six

Heidi

Now

‘Don’t tell me how to react,’ I bark at Alex. I have my head in my hands and I am rocking back and forth. It’s the only way I seem to be able to try to settle the noise in my head.

He has driven out of the cemetery, leaving the rest of the mourners to witness the burial I can’t even bear to think about, and we are driving back towards Marie’s.

‘I’m not telling you how to react, Heidi, but remember, everyone is watching us all at the moment. Looking for any signs that any one of us has something to hide, or isn’t the full shilling.’

‘But I can’t let this go. Was I supposed to say nothing? When I’m faced with my mother’s open grave and that … that … monster being settled in with her? Everything about this was designed to hurt me, to wind me up. To make me lose my temper. But that? That was the final insult. That was cruel, Alex. Just cruel.’

My heart is still thumping as hard as it did in the graveyard. I’m trying not to shout. The last thing I want to do is wake Lily and disturb her from her sleep, but I can hear the volume increasing in my voice anyway. I’m so angry and growing angrier.

He pulls the car over to the side of the road. He puts the handbrake on and releases his seat belt, turning in his seat to face me.

‘Heidi,’ he begins and his face is grey with worry.