At least, I think, at least Alex shouldn’t take long to get here. He only works fifteen minutes away. If the traffic isn’t heavy, that is. And it shouldn’t be. Although with the snow on the ground now, things could take longer than usual. I could be trapped here for longer. I start to spiral.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ I tell Ciara. I can’t stand to be under her gaze for a moment longer.

‘Where?’ she asks.

‘My room. I just want to settle Lily,’ I lie. ‘She’s overdue her nap and she’s upset and I want to make sure she’s okay.’

Ciara looks as if she is weighing up her options. What does she think I’ll do up there anyway?

‘Okay,’ she says with a degree of reluctance. ‘Just for Lily.’

I nod. I won’t thank her. She doesn’t deserve any thanks for letting me leave her sight.

I climb the stairs, my legs still shaky from my fainting episode. I hold on tight to Lily, terrified to let her go. I don’t want to let her go ever again. Ciara is pacing the hall, muttering to herself. Manic.

How will Alex feel when he knows what happened to me? Will Ciara be able to convince him that I’m responsible? Will she tell him I’m unhinged? Will she use the strange things that happened to prove it to him? Will she tell him all about how sick I was as a teenager? The scratching? The fire?

When he finds out how damaged I am, will he ever be able to trust me, to love me, again?

Or maybe that’s been Ciara’s intention all along. Maybe, despite our shared trauma, she hates me so much that she wants to see my life implode.

Chapter Sixty-One

Ciara

Then

On the night Joe died things had been tense in the house. Well, things were always tense in that house, but they were more tense that night. The great ‘I’m going to sell this house as soon as he’s gone’ announcement of the night before had wound us all up.

I veered between not giving a damn what Heidi Lewis did with her godforsaken house and being so angry that she could look at it all so coldly.

I suppose I was angry because her coldness simply mirrored my own.

I wanted him dead. I hoped that he was right when he whined about maybe only having weeks and not the months the doctors said were possible. I couldn’t stand the thought of spending months of my life in his presence. Spending months of my life in that poky bedroom, where the air was stale and there was little in the way of natural light no matter what the time of day.

I couldn’t stand the thought of having to play nice. I didn’t want to play nice. Seeing him had cemented that in my mind. I just wanted him to admit to what he’d done and say sorry. But it seemed that was too much to ask.