‘Of course we do!’ Heidi replies, casting my hand off from hers, pointing a finger at Kathleen. ‘My husband is sitting in a police cell now for all we know. He has been beating himself up for causing Joe’s death when he did no such thing. He did nothing wrong.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Kathleen says and there is a dark glint in her eyes. The softness, the grief, is gone. The change in her tone shocks me. ‘If he’d just kept quiet. Don’t you see? The police had nothing to go on. Apart from the postmortem findings. There was nothing there to link this to any one of us.

‘It would’ve gone away in its own time, but no, Alex had to come forth with some big bleeding-heart confession and risk it all. I can’t go to jail,’ she says, her voice cracking. ‘I won’t go to jail. I was only trying to do the right thing!’

‘If you’re really interested in doing the right thing, you’ll tell the police. You’ll not let anyone else suffer because of your actions,’ Heidi says.

‘I’ve already told you, I’m not contacting the police. Not for you, or Alex, or anyone. My plan is to go back to England in a couple of days and I’m not going to change that.’

I can hardly believe what she’s saying. How she is so cold. Maybe she is more like her brother than I ever thought before.

‘You really think it’s as easy as that?’ I ask her. ‘That we’ll just let you go without telling the police? Come on, Kathleen. You’re not a stupid woman!’

‘Yes, I do think you’re going to let me, because at the end of the day, it will just be your word against mine, won’t it? And neither of you come across as particularly stable these days. Neither of you showed an ounce of compassion towards that man. You’d more reason to want him dead than I did. Everyone knew you both hated him.’

‘We’ll tell them what he did!’ Heidi says. ‘All of it. All the details.’

‘Don’t you think they’ll wonder why you didn’t tell anyone before now? Come on! Heidi, you were still visiting him and you want the police to believe he abused you? And as for you, Ciara, you didn’t even tell your mother. So tell them if you want. It will just make you both look even more like liars.’ She pauses. ‘In fact, maybe you’ve been lying all along. You made that poor man write those words. Those horrible, horrible words.’

‘How dare you!’ Heidi shouts and she is on her feet, storming towards Kathleen, and I have to stand up, grab her and pull her back, even though I’d love to reach for her myself.

How dare Kathleen suggest we’re lying!

‘I’m just fighting my corner,’ she says. ‘Because out of all us, I’m the one person who deserves to go to jail least of all. I loved him.’

‘So much so that you moved away years ago and never came back?’ Heidi sniffs.