‘I think it’s best we just leave all this for today,’ I say. ‘Nothing good can come of it.’

With my face blazing, tears unshed and a deep sense of shame eating at me, I turn and walk to the door. When Alex arrives downstairs with Lily, I tell him we’re leaving. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t speak at all, in fact. He just follows me out of the door and to the car.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Ciara

Now

The white wine in my glass is tepid now. Almost undrinkable. I’ve been nursing it for the last forty-five minutes, too distracted by my thoughts to bring it to my mouth and sip from it. Added to that, I feel sick. Deep in my stomach there’s gnawing nausea that just won’t go away. I don’t want to eat or drink.

I wish I could sleep, but even that seems to be eluding me at the moment. I’ve been half watching something on the TV. Some reality show about properties being fixed up for half of nothing and transformed from perfectly lovely homes to functional spaces with cool, clinical lines. Where so much as a stray cup would have the place looking completely disordered.

A sandal-wearing male designer is waffling on about natural light and feng shui, and all I can think is that he has little to be worrying about. If I had any strength left in my body at all, I would lift the remote and switch the TV off, or, better still, hurl it at the TV.

The anger from earlier has left me drained. Exhausted. Pinned to the sofa with grief.

Stella sits down beside me, lifts up my legs and places them across her lap before repositioning the throw over them. She looks tired. Older. We’re all a bit broken by the last week or so.

‘How are you?’ she asks.

I know she expects an answer – a proper answer and not just a shrug of the shoulders, which I’m not sure I’ve the energy to deliver anyway.

‘Tired,’ I say, setting my wine glass on the floor. I know I won’t drink any more from it.

‘Today was rough,’ she says.

‘It was.’

Stella sighs, strokes my lower leg with her hand. ‘Things with you and Heidi. Have they always been this bad?’

‘Perhaps not this bad – but nobody had been murdered before,’ I say.

I know I’m being glib. I see Stella flinch at my words and I don’t want her to think badly of me. Or worse of me.

‘Yes, they have always been bad. Always. It didn’t start well. I was angry with her, and her mother, over Dad leaving. I felt he chose them over me and I hated them for it.’ I stop, take a deep breath and look back up her. ‘I know that sounds pathetic now, as a grown woman. But I was young then and he was my daddy. I never thought he would leave, but he did. And even when Natalie died, when I thought he might come back to us, he chose to stay on. He chose her over me, and I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven them for that.’