‘Your testimony sealed his fate.’

‘I know, but if he was innocent, why did he confess and plead guilty at the last minute?’

‘It’s like I told you that day outside the court. He didn’t want me taking the stand. He changed his plea to protect me, so I wouldn’t have to testify,’ Elliot replied. ‘What did you really see?’

‘I thought . . . I don’t know what I saw, but I thought he needed to be punished.’

Harri had given Ben all the motivation he ever needed to hate her. It was her testimony that had locked him away for eleven years.

Elliot frowned. ‘When I was a kid, he seemed to be right about everything. I believed in him. Some beliefs are hard to shake, no matter how old you get. You know monsters aren’t real, but when it’s dark and you hear a strange noise, what’s the first thing that springs to mind? It’s never the mundane, is it? We always go back to our basic beliefs, no matter how irrational. The creature under the bed.’

Harri looked down at the galaxy sphere inside the crystal cube. It was resting on her lap on the copy of Happiness: A New Way of Life. She’d brought the book with them to avoid having to touch the cube in case it was toxic.

‘What is this thing?’ Harri asked.

Elliot looked at it, but didn’t reply.

‘What if we’re wrong?’ he asked a few moments later. ‘What if he was telling the truth? What if he’s a good man?’

‘He can’t be,’ Harri protested. ‘He can’t be good.’

‘But what if he is? What then? What does that say about us?’

Harri didn’t like the question, but she hated the answer even more. She refused to voice it, and the two of them went on in silence.

Chapter 40

Harri had assumed they were driving out to the cottage, but they passed the lane that led up to Hen Cloud and Longhaven, and continued along the Buxton Road.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked.

Elliot gave her a grim look but didn’t reply. She knew the answer the moment he turned left onto the narrow track that led to the forest where Sabih had died. Her stomach stung with the release of nervous acid, and she realized how stupid she’d been. There was no guarantee these men weren’t working together. It was very possible Elliot had been indoctrinated as a child – there was no telling where his true loyalties lay. Had she been lured here for revenge?

‘Pull over,’ she said. ‘I want to get out.’

Elliot ignored her. ‘The night your friend died, after we ran away, Ben took me somewhere. I was in a mess, and to this day I’m not sure what was real and what was nightmare. I was just a child. I’d seen a man die. My parents were dead. My whole life felt like a bad dream. He took me to despair.’