It didn’t take me long to piece together what I thought had happened to Caro, and it took me even less time to pack my stuff and get out, clearing Rupert’s bank accounts on the way. I picture him now, hefting Caro’s dead weight into the soakaway, watching as Nick and his men piled on the topsoil. Driving Caro’s car away in the dead of night to leave at that notorious spot near the bridge, while she cooled back at the house. His hand shaking as he forged her one-word suicide note. I should have known that letting myself get attached was a mistake, but there was something about Rupert that I couldn’t resist. My plan on getting the job was to make him fall for me, take the money and go, like I have so many times before, but he crawled under my skin and I let myself fall for him. Things got a bit sticky with Harry, especially at the end, when I broke into the house and waited in his bed, and he lost it completely… but this time I definitely bit off more than I could chew.

People only show you the façade that they want you to see. Everyone does it. We all show our best faces to the others around us.

Rupert’s words come back to me, from the night I realized that he wasn’t who I thought he was. I’ve spent my life putting on a façade in order to drag myself up from nothing to where I am today, thanks to my mother’s training and the hefty bank balances of Rupert, and Harry, and a guy called Justin before them, back when I was calling myself Ellie.

Now, sitting in my little corner of paradise, I watch the man playing with his children, running in and out of the surf even though it’s too chilly for that. I smile as the youngest, a girl, kicks up a spray that soaks his trouser legs and he laughs, his curly blond hair blowing wildly in the breeze. Thanks to the nanny who looks after his children – a round, rosy-cheeked woman who spends a lot of time discussing her employer in the local coffee shop – I know that his name is Patrick, and his wife died five years ago, when the youngest child was barely a few weeks old. He runs his own business, and is very successful at it, winning awards. He likes fishing, hiking, good ale and on top of all that, he is practical, with hands the size of shovels. I also know from the nanny that he is lonely, that he longs for a partner to share the vast amounts of money he has made. For someone to be a proper mother to his children.