Marnie had been questioned by the police about Alice’s disappearance but not until after Alice’s dress had been found at the side of the estuary. By then the accepted version of events was that she had either deliberately or accidentally gone into the water and drowned. Marnie’s testimony was a loose end that needed to be tied, no more than that. She’d told the lies that Will had asked her to tell and when they asked about her father’s whereabouts on the night Alice disappeared she’d confirmed he had found her sleeping beneath the flume and had taken her back home because she was poorly and that she’d gone straight to bed. She was never asked if she’d spent hours searching for her father before then, or if she’d woken up or called for her father during the night. She said, yes, Mrs deVillars had brought a new bottle of lemonade over. No, she hadn’t seen her, but it had been there, in the fridge, in the morning.

She’d been pretty much recovered from her fever by the time of the interview, but was still weak and her voice had all but left her. It was assumed that the near muteness was a symptom of her sickness, a temporary aberration. The police had mostly asked questions to which she could respond with a nod or a shake of the head. Lying had been easy and the questioning hadn’t lasted long. It didn’t seem to occur to the police that Marnie might have any useful information. She was the kind of child who tended to be overlooked. Also, when people thought of Alice, she glowed so brightly that she dazzled. Anyone standing close, especially someone as small and unobtrusive as Marnie, was at risk of being lost in the glare.

At the time, the lies hadn’t bothered Marnie. But now she knew that Alice was dead they were eating into her: not only the lies Will had made her tell, but also her father’s lies and all the others, large and small, in between. Wouldn’t all this misinformation muddy the water now that it was certain Alice had been murdered? Wouldn’t they make it harder for the truth to make itself known?