So, Hollie had kept the truth from her father because James Hampton had been hurt too many times, through circumstances beyond his control. Andrew Buckley had had affairs with both his first and second wives. For the first time I understand just how much James must hate him. But, at last, Buckley’s time is running out.

Niamh

After our father told Dylan that Hollie was our half-sister, Dylan told me, ‘He’s evil, Niamh. He doesn’t care about any of us. His whole life is a lie. Get away from him as soon as you can.’

Over the days that followed, I saw how Dylan suffered. Our father had watched him fall in love with our half-sister, taunting him with cruel words, dragging him lower, twisting Dylan’s life in his bare hands until the morning it snapped.

The night before, there was a dullness in Dylan’s eyes. ‘There is no point anymore,’ he told me. ‘I love Hollie and I can’t be with her.’

‘You’ll love someone else,’ I tried to tell him. ‘There’ll be another girl, Dylan.’

But the light was dimming in his eyes, his life force ebbing away even as I watched, shame taking its place, guilt that he hadn’t known and it was wrong. He already knew there wouldn’t be anyone else. There wasn’t anyone like Hollie.

I remember the quiet in the kitchen the next morning. The sense of emptiness, as if the house already knew Dylan had gone. It was an hour later that my mother tried to wake him, calling up the stairs, ‘Dylan, it’s late. You need to get up.’

He didn’t reply. But time didn’t matter where Dylan had gone. I sat listening as she opened his door; when she cried out, I knew. There was no-one to keep him here. When the greatest love is warped into something twisted, there is nothing left.

Chapter Fifty-One

Jo

When I get back to the office, the DI wants to see me.

‘Border Police at Newhaven have arrested two men for trafficking migrants. Children.’ The DI looks grave. ‘They said they were on their way to a house in Sussex. Near Chichester. They haven’t said much more than that but they’re being interviewed as we speak.’

‘You think they were headed for Mason’s place?’

‘We’ll find out in due course. But if they were, it would explain where Mason’s images came from. Poor little souls – after everything they’ve been through, to end up in the hands of men like this.’