Suzi had asked me about that, as we sat in her house on that terrible night, shell-shocked. Did I do it, what the whispers claimed? The fire that ruined my home, killed my father and my sweet little brother, sent my mother further into her madness? That saw me locked up in Uplands, a psychiatric hospital for teenage girls, until I managed to talk my way out, convince them I was an unfortunate victim of circumstances? I said accidents were sometimes just that: accidents. That was all she needed to know. Not about that night, when it should have been only myself and my parents in the house, when Sebby should have been sleeping over at a friend’s. A friend who, it turned out, had chickenpox, and so Sebby was at home as usual. I, locked in my own room for some new transgression, for complaining about being banned from piano lessons, the boarding school they were about to send me to, had not known he was there. And Suzi didn’t need to know how I had sneaked out, passing my mother’s room, seeing her wiped out on her bed with a cigarette burning down between her slim fingers. Or about me moving her hand ever so slightly closer to the curtains. Nor about getting out, taking the dogs with me so they’d be safe. Considering my father, absent even if present in body, never less than two glasses of whisky in, and dismissing him. Not about realising, too late, that Sebby was also there. Seeing his white face at the window as I raced up the lawn of the house, the grass cold and wet beneath me, the dogs yelping. Ellie! Ellie! Trying to get in, beaten back by smoke, my precious hands burned.

Of course I didn’t know he was there. He was a child, an innocent. I would never have hurt him. Anyway, I was a different person now. Not Eleanor Treadway, or Elena Vetriano, or Elle-belle, or Nora Halscombe. I didn’t quite know who I was, not yet. But I would find out.

‘Eleanor,’ said Suzi now, hesitantly. ‘I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t worry.’ I stroked the baby’s hand, and she clutched my finger in her tiny fist. ‘It’s all going to be fine. The investigation will be wrapped up soon, and then I’ll leave.’

She went even paler. ‘You’re sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Will you tell him about me? About Issy? The truth?’

‘I don’t think he deserves it.’