‘No, Lou. You wanted me to make it go away. You’d been drinking. You’d been taking drugs. You were a mess. And you’d have been done for murder.’

A silence fell between them. Louisa contemplated what he’d said, wrestled with the notion of her wanting Oliver to help her cover up what she’d done. What kind of person did that make her? She swallowed hard to fight against the rising bile, dreading the answer to her next question.

‘So you somehow got rid of the body?’

‘Yes, that’s all I could think of doing. It wasn’t as if I had many options open to me. I’m not going to tell you where – I always swore I wouldn’t. Just in case. You can always plead ignorance then, if it ever comes to it. Although it seems that’s what you’ve been doing all this time anyway. It’s been me who’s been living with the truth all these years. The crushing guilt.’

‘I’m so sorry, Oliver. I can’t take this in. I don’t know what to do.’

‘You do nothing, Lou-Lou. No good can come to anyone if it comes out now.’

‘I think her family would disagree, Oliver. How on earth did we get away with it, anyway?’

‘Her body has never been found. I think the police had given up looking for her a long time ago.’

‘You knew who it was?’

‘Yes, I do now. I found the missing person stories in the newspaper a few years ago. Though it had all died out quite quickly at the time, I never stopped thinking about it. I had to find out more.’

‘I don’t understand – why did it die out so quickly?’

‘Because the missing person reports had been for a year prior to the accident. She’d been a runaway. When you … when she’d been in the lane that night, I think it was because she was living rough in one of the disused barns along the back road to Torquay. No one knew where she was, her family had all but given up on finding her – no one missed her after I’d done the … the deed.’

‘God. The poor woman, her family. They will still be wondering what happened to her, Oliver – still holding out hope that she’s alive somewhere.’

‘I know. Believe me, I know. I’ve suffered flashbacks, insomnia, huge guilt over covering it up – especially once I saw the aftermath: the articles and desperate pleas from her family members, all the while knowing their attempts to find her alive would prove futile. But I loved you.’ He manoeuvred Louisa so that she was facing him. ‘I still do.’