‘I don’t know what went wrong between them. Dylan told me it was over, but he didn’t tell me the reason.’ Elise’s face is blank. ‘I assumed their relationship had run its course. They were young. It seemed inevitable at that age.’

I think back to what Ida Jones said, about how they had had something rare, that she felt blessed to witness it. ‘Your husband said that Hollie ended it, but James Hampton said it was Dylan. Do you know what happened?’

Her voice is cold. ‘I know that Dylan wouldn’t have confided anything in Andrew. Niamh told you what she heard her father saying to him before he died. It was Andrew who tipped him over the edge. It wasn’t Hollie.’

I’m silent. So why has Buckley told us these lies? There’s the sound of quiet footsteps coming downstairs, and when I look up, I see Niamh standing in the doorway.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Jo

For a moment Niamh doesn’t move. ‘There was a letter.’ Her voice is thin, clear.

‘What letter?’ Elise’s voice is sharp.

‘Dylan wrote a letter to Hollie. I found it after he died.’

‘Did you give it to her?’ My voice is gentle. When Niamh nods, I ask, ‘When?’

‘A few weeks ago.’

‘Did you read it?’

Niamh nods again.

‘Why did you wait until then to give it to her?’

‘I shouldn’t have kept it.’ Niamh speaks quietly. ‘Dylan wrote it for her.’

‘What did the letter say?’ Elise speaks harshly, but everything about her is brittle right now, as though she’ll snap. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Then I get it. She’s frightened about how much Niamh knows. As I study Niamh, suddenly I know the answer. She hasn’t told us until now because she’s been protecting her mother from something – drip-feeding information to us, as the DI said, on what she judges to be a need-to-know basis. Suddenly I know, with certainty, there’s more.

Niamh goes on. ‘In the letter, Dylan told Hollie he loved her – more than this world. He said she should never forget that.’ Her voice is surprisingly unemotional, but this isn’t new to her. She’s been sitting on it since her brother died. ‘But he said that if they were together, his father had told him he would cause Hollie a whole lot of trouble. The only way to save her was to give her up.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

Niamh’s eyes flicker over me. ‘Before she was with Dylan, Hollie had problems. She was bulimic – and she self-harmed. Dylan helped her stop, but my father was her doctor. He knew because he was treating her.’ Her face is expressionless. ‘He would have told everyone – her school, her parents. Everyone.’