Will looked at the text for a long time. Then he deleted it and paced around the caretaker’s cottage fighting the urge to call her. It would be a mistake. He’d say something he didn’t really mean, and would later have to retract, simply to make things feel a little better than they did now, trying to make it so they didn’t end on a bad note. It was, in his experience, impossible to end a relationship on a good one.

The truth of it was he wanted to hear a kind voice. He yearned to talk to somebody who would tell him he wasn’t as bad a person as he believed himself to be.

But if he’d killed Alice, he didn’t deserve compassion. If he’d done that, then he’d rather die in prison than have to face Marnie or his mother or Saoirse or anyone he’d ever cared for again.

He distracted himself by searching the caretaker’s cottage. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Some letter from the adoption agency, or Denise’s old teenage diary, something that would confirm she’d delivered a baby girl and subsequently given up the child would have been ideal, but he found nothing of the sort. There were a few random bills and receipts, lists made by John, instruction leaflets, one of Marnie’s old school reports. Nothing more.

Frustrated, he went outside and had a poke around the garden. It was untidy and overgrown. There was still coal in the bunker and logs in the woodshed so he collected enough to keep him warm for the rest of the day, took his haul into the front room, and stacked it by the hearth. He made a small fire in the grate, lit it with the matches he found on the mantelpiece, and sat on the settee with the laptop on his knees. The crackle of the flames was cosy. He stared at the research notes he’d already made, the notes referring to Alice’s birth mother and his impressions of the town and how it had changed. No matter how he looked at the words, nothing became any clearer.

When loneliness overwhelmed him, he called his mother in Majorca.

‘What is it?’ Angharad asked. ‘What’s happened? Have the police been in touch with you? Are you all right?’

‘Nothing’s happened,’ Will said. ‘No, the police haven’t been in touch, and yes, I’m fine. I just…’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, Will.’

They were both silent for a few moments.

‘It’ll be OK, you know,’ said Angharad. ‘It always is.’

‘I don’t think it can ever be OK.’

‘You’ll see.’

Will sighed.

Then he said: ‘Mum, do you remember that evening, Alice’s last evening when I got drunk and John brought me back to the chalet?’

‘Yes.’

‘What if I did something to Alice?’

‘Did something?’

‘Hurt her.’