Ida hesitates. ‘There’s no accounting for some folk. You’d think they’d show a little more kindness.’ I wonder if word has got around about Stephanie’s crash possibly being intentional, or if Ida knows about Andrew and Stephanie … But she changes the subject. ‘So, what about you, dear? How are you?’

Her question takes me by surprise. It’s so long since anyone has asked anything like that. As tears fill my eyes, I try to wipe them away without her noticing. Her frown deepens. ‘Elise, dear. What’s wrong? Whatever it is, you do know you can talk to me.’

I look at her, touched by her kindness, but where do I start? There’s so much she doesn’t know – about Andrew, Niamh, Hollie …

‘Oh, I’m fine.’ I pin on a ghost of the mask I wear. ‘It’s been a difficult time, hasn’t it?’ I can’t burden her with everything that’s wrong in my life – because even if I did tell her, nothing would change.

Niamh

I try to remember Hollie alive – free, happy, the way she was when she was with Dylan. If he hadn’t gone, none of this would have happened. Dylan abandoning her changed Hollie’s life.

But there were consequences for all of us …

I avoid the churchyard for a while, until in the end it pulls me back. Hollie’s grave doesn’t yet have a headstone, but Hollie wouldn’t care about that. Her voice is in the air, the wind blowing her words into my mind: ‘Remember me as I was, Niamh … Don’t let anyone forget …’

As I stand beside her grave, the sun warming my back, I try to imagine the night she died, Hollie’s last minutes. Her body in shock as cold, dark water engulfed her, her fear as it closed over her, the fight to reach the surface and then the realisation that there was nothing she could do; she was dying. I wonder how long it took before she stopped thinking, before oxygen stopped reaching her brain, before her body went limp; how much more time passed before Hollie’s spirit left it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jo

The day after Stephanie Hampton’s funeral, we finally track down the delivery driver, then question him about the man he met to discuss the porn business when we discover that the man fits Mason’s description, confirmed later when we show him a photo of Mason.

As a result, the search for Mason is stepped up, but apart from his passport being traced to a flight he boarded to Paris a week ago, he’s become invisible.