But this wasn’t Maggie’s husband. Neither was it her old friend. It was his face, his body. But there was something else in him. As he pushed back the hood, it was a shock to see the burns he’d suffered, but that wasn’t what made him so frightening. It was the hatred blazing in his eyes. If Blackhall Manor had a soul, then Lewis Carter was its living manifestation.

Sarah hadn’t wanted to believe that Elliott’s father was capable of murder, which is why she’d called on Maggie – to give her a chance to explain. But her old friend had continued to lie. She couldn’t call her out in front of her son. The idea had come when she visited Elsie in hospital and stopped by the burns unit to speak to Lewis. But he wasn’t in the hospital burns unit. His physical injuries had been dealt with. He’d been at The Oaks Rehabilitation Centre in Benrith, being treated for clinical depression and PTSD. But Lewis hadn’t been committed. As a voluntary patient he could come and go as he pleased. Elliott had sensed a man with two faces – his loving, heroic father and the vengeful man he had become. Elliott didn’t recognise his daddy in his visions because half of Lewis’s face had been melted away. The physical scars may be healing but the mental scars were raw and exposed. And now he was standing before her, threatening her with a double-barrelled shotgun.

His voice dripped with venom. ‘All these years … I thought you were dead. Then you come back here like nothing has happened. You didn’t even have the decency to tell me you were alive.’

Sarah’s heart plummeted as she recognised an emotion she knew only too well. Unadulterated grief. But her friendship with Lewis was so many years ago now. He had wanted to take things further, but Sarah hadn’t felt the same way. The other night in her kitchen, Sarah had stared at the photo of them together – Lewis smiling at the camera, his arms thrown over their shoulders as she and Maggie stood either side. It was the way Maggie was looking at Lewis in the photo that had left her feeling unsettled. Had she guessed Lewis’s feelings for her? Was that why she’d helped spread the rumours that Sarah died in the wardrobe as a teen?

‘Lewis,’ she said. ‘Maggie was meant to tell you I was OK. I was in no state to reach out myself.’ But her words did nothing to dampen the anger that seemed to emanate from Lewis’s every pore.

‘Bullshit!’ he spat. ‘She told me you died. I blamed myself for what happened to you. If you hadn’t been grounded because of me, you would have been on a sleepover at Maggie’s on Halloween night.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Sarah said, aghast. ‘How could I?’