‘What? No. Poor Oliver, it was me who’d made him drive out there. He did what he thought was best for me. He disposed of her body. For me. I was drunk, had been taking drugs. He said I’d have gone to prison …’

‘Louisa. Listen to me. It was Oliver who killed Helen. Not you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Louisa took a step back, pressing both hands to her chest, her breaths suddenly shallow.

‘After I saw you in this garden, and we talked, you told me your history with Oliver. You told me how he’d left you back in 1997, that he’d said he was doing it to protect you after your accident – you got so upset and I knew something big had happened. So, some things fell into place for me. I confronted Oliver after the party, said I knew the reason he’d come back as I’d spoken to you, and he flipped. He must’ve assumed you’d told me everything about the accident in the lanes, thought I’d added two and two together. He lost it, tried to strangle me, Louisa. Look.’

Melissa pulled at the silk scarf around her throat, revealing a yellowing ring of bruises.

‘I tell you, it was like he’d become possessed. I couldn’t understand it. I fought him hard, kicked him in the balls. He backed off then, unable to carry on his attack. When he’d got his breath back, he began rambling an incoherent explanation about what you’d done. He was trying to blame you to start with, saying you’d killed her and that his only crime had been in trying to clear up your mess. But then he crumpled, like all his strength left him and he was finally defeated, his lies too heavy to bear; he fell apart. He sat there, crying like a child. Then it all spilled out of him, the truth, like a long stream of hot guilt that he’d carried with him for over twenty years.’

‘But … he told me. Said it was me who’d killed her. He went to where it’d happened and when he came back, he said he’d taken care of it. For me. To protect me. And after a while he left the area – again, to protect me. That’s what he said. It’s what I believed.’

‘It’s the way he’d have liked to believe it happened too. But it didn’t. He said when he got to the location you’d specified, my sister was propped against a tree trunk. Battered and bloody, but very much alive. She looked at him, begged him to call an ambulance, to call me. He said he was doing it for you. That’s how he’d justified strangling the life from her, then burying her body.’