‘Honey?’ I said, incredulous. Nothing I’d read mentioned honey as a carnivorous food. There were three thousand four hundred and sixty-eight jars of it in the pantry, all from local sources and with intriguing flavours, like clover and acacia. Lavender was Gaia’s favourite.

‘I know, I know,’ Maren said wearily. ‘Frankly I’d say honey is perfectly vegan. But Tom doesn’t agree with some of the practices of bee-keeping now, so he’d rather we avoided honey altogether.’

I reassured her that of course I would abide by Tom’s wishes going forward, but I could sense she didn’t trust me – I wracked my brain, wondering what I could have done to create a bad impression. And then I realized, and when I did, I could barely speak for sheer, ground-opening horror: the window opposite threw back my reflection, a reflection that showed I had rolled my sleeves up and revealed the long red scars all over my forearms to Maren. The cuts had healed and the swelling had gone down, but they were still visible, stark signatures of what I’d done in David’s bathroom. Like a child caught with her hand in the biscuit tin I immediately and not at all subtly swiped both arms behind my back, and although Maren continued chatting about free-range milk, wondering aloud whether goat’s milk could qualify as vegan, there was a moment, wide as the universe, of silence. That silence told me she had seen the scars and knew exactly what they were. More importantly, she knew that these scars did not tally with my counterfeit identity. Sophie Hallerton was not the sort of person who would inflict such injuries on herself. And after all, who would want someone capable of injuring themselves so badly looking after their children – young children whose own mother had recently committed suicide?

I can’t remember what Maren said after that, but I think I mumbled a promise about avoiding honey before heading back to my room, climbing into bed, and crying beneath the covers. I was crying not simply because I was sure the game was up, but because I had been reminded that the difference between Lexi Ellis and Sophie Hallerton was a vast gulf that could be measured in light years. Perhaps my mother had always been right. I didn’t deserve to be here. I was a fraud, a trickster. That was a fact.