And they did – stare – for a while. And it wasn’t just the visitors. The staff kept a wary distance for a couple of days, and the staffroom fell silent everytime I walked in to get my lunch, but gradually, over time, talk returned to normal topics – like who’d be voted off Strictly, and who had tickets to see Elton John at the cricket ground, and whether Slimming World or Weight Watchers is better for weight loss – and the ugly shadow that the article had cast over me slowly faded away. I’m pretty sure Angharad was responsible for stealing the first letter Leanne had sent to me. She never admitted it, but she speculated in her article that the fire had been started by someone who had a grudge against me, and mentioned that she’d seen evidence to prove it.

There’s still a shadow hanging over me, but it’s not one that others see. The ghosts of Daisy and Leanne still haunt me. Neither of them deserved to die. Leanne was mentally ill and Daisy was drunk, blinded by love and manipulated into turning against me. I got in touch with Daisy’s dad after the CID closed their investigation, and asked if we could meet. I expected him to refuse, or scream abuse at me down the phone. Instead he said yes, and drove to Bude to see me. He sat at my kitchen table and listened as I told him what had happened in Nepal. I didn’t mention the knife when I described how Daisy and Al had tussled on the clifftop. I didn’t want his last image of Daisy to be of her with a knife in her hand, threatening her friends. As I ended the story, I expected him to cry or shout or run from the room. Instead, he sat very still, his hands on his thighs, and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Pain was etched on his face, not just from Daisy’s death, but also from the two other deaths – of his wife and younger daughter – that he’d had to mourn, many years earlier. When he said goodbye at the front door, he hugged me tightly and told me he’d be in touch, but I knew he wouldn’t.

I tried to phone Leanne’s mum, but she slammed the phone down. I tried a couple more times and then Will told me to stop. It wasn’t helping her and it wasn’t helping me. However Leanne’s mum felt about her daughter and Isaac, she didn’t want to share it with a stranger.