‘That’s why you left,’ Barb interrupts, slamming her hands down on the table. ‘You happily left us to deal with the evil.’

‘That may be, but you didn’t deal with it very well,’ Patrick says.

Barb lets out a hysterical laugh. ‘Don’t you dare …’ Her breathing is fast and shallow. I think she might collapse. I go to her side.

‘Try to stay calm, Barb,’ I tell her. ‘Take slow breaths.’ I don’t want the woman dying in my house. ‘None of this explains why you have pretended to be someone else, have come back into our lives and tried to get me out of this house, though, Richard,’ I say, glaring at him. Finally, things are sinking in fully, and anger is now replacing the shock.

‘I was protecting you. And Finley and Leo.’

‘By lying to us. Telling me you loved me. How could you?’ I scream.

‘I do love you, and the boys. I love my family very much. That’s why I left,’ Tim says. His eyes are wet with tears, but I’m guessing they’re fake too.

‘I’m not buying that,’ I say. ‘You kept your identity from me, from your family. Your entire reason for being with me was a lie. Jesus. How are we meant to believe you’ve somehow been protecting us?’

‘I see it,’ Barb says. I turn sharply to face her.

‘What do you see, Barb? Because all I see is you sabotaging my house sale, my relationship with Rich— Sorry, Tim, because you were selfishly trying to keep my family exactly as they’d once been since you failed so miserably at keeping your own together.’

‘It was bigger than that,’ she says, then buries her head in her arms.

‘Come on, Amber – think about it all,’ Tim says. ‘Everything that’s been happening is linked. Mum was preventing you from leaving because she was afraid of what was going to happen to the house. Not you. And I was trying to get you away from here – you and the boys – because I knew it was all about to come out. All the lies, the buried secrets were going to be unearthed. Literally.’

‘The developers,’ I say in a whisper.

‘Yes. They were the catalyst for me coming out from hiding. It was inevitable that at some point in the not-too-distant future, they would start digging … Do you understand, Amber?’

‘Fucking hell …’ My entire body is shaking with the realisation.

Nick, too, must suddenly have added it all up and pulling out a chair, sits heavily on it. ‘Christ,’ he says. ‘The victims are buried in the garden, aren’t they?’

Chapter Ninety-Six

Amber

For a moment, everyone is stunned into silence.

‘Jesus Christ, Barb,’ I shout in her face. I want to grab hold of her and shake her. But Nick’s anger supersedes my own.