Tom walks over and wraps me in his arms. I pull away.

‘Amber’s due home from school any minute now,’ I say, gathering the cards from the table and telling him to take Ellen home before she arrives. I can’t believe she hid it from us for sixteen years. That my father knew.

It hits me then, like a train. Did Claire McCarthy ask for more money? Did Ellen pay Claire McCarthy a visit? No. Stop, Sal. You know Ellen didn’t stab Claire McCarthy. Ellen was here the day of the party until Jack picked her up… except when she left to get the candles.

But my father wasn’t here all day. He just called in for a few minutes. He had plenty of time to visit her.

Chapter Fifty-One

Later that evening, the boys are in bed and Amber is around at Sarah’s house. I checked.

The cops arrive when Tom calls them about the box of letters. He also told them about the money our parents gave Claire McCarthy to shut her up. They’d find out anyway. At this stage we don’t need to be holding on to any secrets. Plus, it shows the type of woman Claire McCarthy was, how manipulative and dangerous she could be. Maybe she has more enemies out there.

Angela Burke takes the box in her hand like a baby just pooped on it. Arms straight, she holds it out while her colleague manoeuvres it into a big plastic evidence bag. She now has proof that Kenny knew Joyce McCarthy. That she did contact him. It means nothing, except Kenny is a liar and as a young boy who suddenly discovers his mother is not his real mother, and then she’s killed; maybe he could be excused.

He says he found the box of secrets in his mother’s room one day, hidden at the bottom of a wardrobe. His mother said the letters were from a crazy relation who was in an asylum somewhere in America. He wasn’t to pay any heed to them. Kenny didn’t think much more about it until he was contacted last year by Joyce on Facebook.

‘This will be them?’ Burke takes the phone from her belt and holds it in the air before answering it. She nods… nods and nods again, eventually thanking Dr Grimes at the far end of the phone before cutting him off.

Pushing her thumbs into the black leather belt, she shuffles on her feet, straightening her back before announcing that Joyce McCarthy is most probably Kenny’s mother. The autopsy guy told Burke that Claire McCarthy had never given birth to a baby.

A sense of dread envelops me. My head, bang, bang, bang. Moving to the kitchen I swallow two painkillers. Part of me is relieved they now have a motive for Joyce murdering her sister.