Joanne tried to keep her face impassive. It was probably evident that she harboured doubts, but Caroline had gone back to arguing with herself.

‘I’d just found out that I was pregnant when it happened, how could I refuse to give Greg an alibi? It was really busy at the bar that night. Ailsa kept coming up, trying to get him to talk to her, throwing me dirty looks. Greg brushed her off, so I knew he was telling the truth about her pestering him. Afterwards, I was really tired so went back to my place because I had to open up the shop early next morning.’

She continued. ‘We all thought she’d gone up to the campsite to meet up with her druggie friends. Gone back to Glasgow. We never thought she could be dead.’ She sounded surprised at this, almost as if she’d just found out. ‘Greg was worried that folk had seen her chasing him. When she went missing he asked me to say I was with him that night. How could I not?’

Joanne understood that perfectly. Had it been her, she may well have done the same. Even now, despite all the evidence against him, she was still arguing with herself about going or staying.

It seemed as though she’d chosen a man just like the one she’d run away from. Manipulative, hiding their true nature until they’d fooled you into thinking they were someone else. Everything Caroline was saying chimed with her own experience of Greg.

And yet . . . and yet.

She had been the one to choose him. She had singled him out. Seduced him. Tried to work out what he wanted and pandered to it. Because she wanted away from Richard. She wanted to be the one in control.

And she’d thought she had been the one in control, but how long had that lasted?

How much Greg must have enjoyed playing her along. Indulging her needs, her fantasises, like the tree with the leather straps.

What truth had there ever been between them?

They had been merely playing a game. She to seduce him so that she might escape Richard’s clutches. Greg, a seemingly free man in London, responding to her advances, and yet he already had someone back in Blackrig. A history. A partner. A dead baby . . .

‘When the police told me he’d been with Ailsa that night, I was so angry. I kept thinking that, back then, we had a son. We’d seen him on the scan. We’d decided to call him Mac. Then it was all over. Mac was dead.’

From almost talking to herself, she raised her eyes again.