It took me forty minutes to drive to The Willows, the clock on my dashboard telling me it was ten forty-five when I pulled up outside. I half expected the house to be in darkness but in fact I could see a light burning brightly from the living room. They must have changed their phone number, I thought, and remembered how Rose had told me never to contact her again, the last time we’d met. When I knocked, the look on Rose’s face told me all I needed to know. She nodded silently at me to come in, and when I followed her into the kitchen Oliver was there, white as a sheet. Fear trailed its fingers along my spine. ‘Do you know?’ I blurted. ‘That Hannah has been meeting with Emily? I came here to warn you, I don’t know what she’s planning to do but—’

‘You’re too late, Beth,’ Rose replied quietly. ‘Emily got a phone call and she went out, saying she was going to meet her friend Becky. When she came back she knew everything. It was Hannah she’d been meeting all along, she’d told her everything.’

I sank on to a chair. ‘Oh, Rose.’

Her face twisted in pain. ‘She’s gone,’ she said. ‘Emily has gone. We don’t know where she is. She says she never wants to see or speak to us again. She hates us, she thinks we’re monsters!’ And then Rose told me what had happened. Emily had come home from seeing Hannah, beside herself with fury. ‘She kept shouting, “Is it true? Is it true?” She knew everything. About Oliver’s affair, Nadia’s death, how Hannah had been given away. Hannah even told her that I had killed Nadia, that I’d pushed her into the sea in revenge for sleeping with Oliver!’

‘My God,’ I said. ‘Did Emily believe her?’

She put her head in her hands. ‘I don’t know. I hope not, I don’t think so … I don’t know! She said that even if it wasn’t true, it was still Oliver’s fault she jumped, that he drove her to it.’ Rose burst into tears. ‘And she said I was as bad as Oliver, because I’d known all along about Hannah, about Oliver’s affair and Nadia’s death, and didn’t tell her. She said I’d covered up for him, that I was as disgusting as he was. God, it’s all such a mess. She hates us, absolutely hates us.’