Clara couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘This is your daughter. Your daughter! As much your flesh and blood as Emily! Didn’t you care? Didn’t you feel any guilt, any responsibility for this woman? Jesus, Oliver! I can’t believe what I’m hearing!’ Oliver kept his head bent, unable to meet her gaze. She felt a burning dislike for him.

‘But why after ten years did she get it together to go after Luke?’ Mac asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense. Why now?’

Rose shook her head. ‘We don’t know.’

Tom drained his glass of wine. ‘When did you guess that Hannah was behind Luke’s disappearance?’ he asked.

Oliver glanced at him. ‘Hannah sent us a picture of him, saying he was with her. She said that she wanted more money, that if we didn’t give it to her, she’d hurt him. So we gave her what she asked for, then she said it wasn’t enough. She said if we paid her more she’d let Luke go. We’ve been going out of our minds, Tom. We know it’s not money she wants, she wants to torture us, this is her revenge, that’s why she’s keeping it going, the longer she can cause us pain, the better she likes it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’ Tom asked next. ‘Surely that was the first thing you should have done?’

‘We didn’t dare!’ Rose said. ‘She seems to know everything about us. Every move we make – when we speak to the police, what we talk about with them, our conversations or meetings with Clara, you name it, she somehow knows about it. We couldn’t work out how she was doing it, even if we used public telephones, she’d know what we talked about, it’s terrifying. She said if we told the police about her, she’d know and she’d kill Luke immediately. We couldn’t take that risk. And then …’ her voice faltered and she took a gulping breath. ‘And then she sent us pictures of Luke, to warn us what would happen if we did.’

‘Pictures?’ Clara asked, feeling sick. ‘What pictures?’

Oliver pulled his phone from his pocket. ‘This is the last one that Hannah sent us.’

‘Let me see that.’ Tom’s face drained of colour as he took the phone from his father and stared down at its screen. Wordlessly he passed it to Clara. It was a picture of Luke. He had a large and vivid bruise across his face, a split lip, and his skin behind his scars was horribly pale, his eyes staring glassily at the lens.

Clara gasped in horror as she swiped to the next photo. It showed Luke’s bound arms, covered in hundreds of small, weeping knife wounds. ‘Oh no,’ she whispered, ‘oh God.’