The memories were close as Marnie went into her parents’ old bedroom. She sat on the bed, and she opened the locket that Denise had hidden under Marnie’s pillow all those years earlier. She held it on her lap, the pictures of herself and Alice keeping one another company, always.

Outside, the rain fell. Drops ran down the window. Marnie heard the faint roar of the bulldozers on the building site.

Alice knew Denise was dead before she came to Severn Sands, but she must have hoped her father would receive her with open arms, take her in and that his love would make up for the unhappiness she’d experienced with the Langs. She had a fairy-tale idea of what family life should be and could not have conceived of a world where Edward deVillars would not be thrilled to be reunited with his long-lost daughter. She wasn’t to know that her existence threatened the stability of the life he’d so meticulously built. She could not possibly understand how precarious his world was; how viciously he guarded it.

She could not have known that her mother had taken her own life when she realised there was no escaping his will.

* * *

After Guy had forced open the door to Camille’s bedroom and found the three women unconscious inside, the police had been called. The women had been taken to hospital by ambulance. When she was well enough, Marnie had told the police everything she knew. Edward deVillars had been questioned yet still he denied murdering Alice. He blamed Camille, as she had predicted he would. He said Alice had come demanding money to keep the secret of her parentage quiet and Camille didn’t have the money so she had killed Alice. But Alice wouldn’t have done that and Camille never hurt anyone in her life.

Edward’s story was a typical construct of those with the kind of psychopathy he exhibited. He was transposing his actions to Alice. Marnie believed he’d tried to buy Alice’s silence, offering her money to keep quiet and go away, and when she refused he had killed her.

He was an arrogant, proud man who did not want his reputation or his perfect life ruined by a scandal, the fact that he’d impregnated and then abandoned a teenager when he was still at school. He was used to manipulating women. He hadn’t expected Alice to stand up to him, but that’s what she would have done.

* * *

Marnie heard a knock at the front door, and then it opened and a voice called up the stairs, ‘Marnie? Are you there?’

She closed the locket and slipped it back in her pocket, went to the top of the stairs. Will was standing in the hallway.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘how’s the head?’

‘OK,’ Marnie said.