A niggling feeling deep in her gut also offered the possibility that finding the dead girl’s sister, infiltrating her family, was his warped way of seeing first-hand the damage he’d created – like when murderers revisited the scene of their crime – only he’d taken that one step further. Whatever his twisted reasoning, the betrayal was obviously way too much for Melissa to endure and when Louisa had drunkenly given her details about her and Oliver’s relationship, the accident that had caused him to leave her, she’d given Melissa the missing jigsaw pieces that she was now acting upon so ruthlessly.

This whole situation was her doing.

How will it end?

Louisa had been lost in thought, the words being spoken now bounced around her, unheard.

‘Did you hear him, Louisa?’ Melissa shouted inches from her ear. ‘Say it again, Oliver. Tell her.’

Louisa’s eyes settled on Oliver’s, her focus now back on the moment.

‘I’m sorry, Lou-Lou. I don’t know why I lied, back then. I guess I couldn’t bear to lose you, even though that’s what ended up happening. But if I’d told you, if I’d come clean about what I did, what would you have done? You were already beside yourself, verging on hysteria – you looked to me to solve everything. To save you. It was easier to keep the details of how I’d managed that to myself – it was better for the both of us. Surely you can see that?’

Louisa couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t respond with anything other than a strangled noise emanating from her paralysed voice box. Oliver took her silence as indication he should continue – the voice inside Louisa’s head was silently screaming for him to shut up.

‘All I’ve thought about since then was why? Why did you drag me into it? If you hadn’t called me that night in such a state, I’d never have done what I did. I did it for you; that’s God’s honest truth. I thought if she survived, she’d be able to identify the car, and you. I panicked, and she was shouting at me to call an ambulance, but I froze, couldn’t think where the nearest phone box was – the lanes weren’t the ones I drove. I didn’t really know where I was.’ He stopped speaking, breathless.

‘Go on. Tell me what you did. Tell Louisa how you ended my sister’s life.’

Oliver took a juddering breath in, releasing it in a slow hiss. ‘I knew she was hurt badly; she couldn’t move her legs, blood was oozing from her broken body. I knew it wouldn’t take much. I’ve snapped a rabbit’s neck before – I didn’t think it would be so different.’

‘Oh, Jesus, no!’ Louisa covered her mouth with her hand.