I wish that I could turn back the clock and not come to see him, even though he was ill. It was selfish of him to pull me back into his drama again. He wanted to ‘make amends’, he said, and yet he’d never once talked about the past. That sordid past.

Maybe, if he had even said sorry, I could be less angry. But he hadn’t. The whole thing was just his way of trying to control me all over again. And I had fallen for it, because a part of me, that damaged part of me that was still mired in shame and confusion, believed it might have helped, needed him to say sorry and that he loved me, and that he knew he had done very bad things.

But I’d expected too much of him, just like I always did.

He knew if I’d ignored his request I’d look like the evil, ungrateful daughter. In his arrogance he had been sure that I would never reveal his filthy secrets to anyone. Or maybe it wasn’t arrogance at all. I had kept quiet for years, after all. I had not called out his sick actions. Maybe if I had …

I try not to think about that. I try to hold on to the sense of relief that I feel now he is gone. Now he is rotting in the ground.

I never have to fear hearing his voice, or seeing his face, or feeling his touch again.

But I do have to clear out his belongings from the house Heidi so desperately wants to get rid of. I try not to think about that too much, either. Why she wants to get rid of the house so quickly. Why she is so damaged.

Stella asked me this morning if I thought I should tell people the truth of what happened when I was younger. I shook my head. What good would it do people to know now? It can’t be changed, I’d thought.

‘But at least they, including your mum and Kathleen, might stop talking about him as if he is some saint. That must be hard for you,’ she said as she buttered some toast for me – still intent on pampering me after the previous night’s revelations.

‘Causing them pain won’t make any of this easier for me,’ I’d said.

They can’t confront him. They can’t make him face justice. But I suppose he faced justice the night he died. He had no doubt experienced fear and terror and pain. He had known what it was like to be helpless. To be weak and vulnerable.

Karma had come full circle, I suppose.

‘Do you think you should tell the police?’ she had probed gently.

I’d shrugged. ‘Why? It’s not like they can arrest him.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But it might help them understand why someone killed him.’

She’d looked away, stared out of the kitchen window. It dawned on me that my revelation had given me a very strong motive for wanting him dead.