‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Why do you ask?’

I try to stop my voice from shaking. Someone has torn the pages out. That much is clear.

‘There just seems to be something missing. Some of the info I needed.’

‘Pin numbers and passwords? That kind of thing?’ she asks and I see it.

I see she is trying to catch me out. I see that she knows exactly what I’m looking for. She’s just waiting to see if I’ll confront her about it.

‘Yes,’ I say, ‘that sort of thing.’

Heidi is looking at me, her eyes pleading with me to solve this huge problem that is beyond my ability to solve.

‘Ah, good. Because the way you’re acting, I’d almost swear you were looking for something else.’

‘What else could there be?’ I ask her and I know we are playing a game. Just as I know she is not on my side.

She shrugs. ‘Maybe something that should never be seen by anyone else,’ she says, flicking an imaginary piece of fluff from her skirt before holding my gaze. ‘Because if you’re looking for those disgusting things he wrote, I’ve destroyed them. Burned the pages. They contained all sorts of things. Lots of private information, you know, things you wouldn’t want falling into the wrong hands. Things you wouldn’t want the whole world knowing.’

Chapter Seventy

Heidi

Now

Has Kathleen really just said what I think she said? She’s destroyed Joe’s confession? There’s nothing to show the police? Nothing to help Alex? I feel as if I might be sick.

‘What do you mean?’ I hear Ciara ask as I try to fight the nausea in the pit of my stomach.

‘What I mean,’ Kathleen says, ‘is that I have burned whatever it was my brother wrote about things he said he did in his past.’

‘But why would you do that?’ Ciara asks.

I can hear the disbelief, the pain, in her voice.

‘It’s all very simple,’ Kathleen says.

She’s trying to maintain a façade of cold indifference, but I see that she is trembling.

‘I saw the things he had written. That “confession” of his. And there was no way I was risking anyone else reading that.’

I can’t hide the horrified look on my face.

‘No!’ Ciara says, shaking her head. ‘No, you can’t have done that. You’d no right to do that!’

‘Had I not?’ Kathleen asks. ‘Do you think I want everyone and his mother talking about my brother in that way? I don’t care if he’s dead, I won’t have people saying he was some kind of pervert.’

‘He was more than a pervert,’ Ciara says. ‘He was a monster. He hurt us. Me. Heidi. Abused us. Raped us!’ The last two words are shouted.

Raped us. The words out loud have a powerful effect on me. Like a punch in the stomach but one that releases all the hurt and anger that has just about been contained over the years. My fists clench. Tears run freely down my face, but I don’t care any more. I am not ashamed. I will not be ashamed any more.