Isla stands in the doorway. She wraps the towel tightly around herself. ‘What’s going on?’

Louisa looks up at her. ‘Are you all right, Isla?’

‘I’m fine.’

She stands. ‘Are you sure? You look awful. Your lips are blue.’

‘I’m fine, Mum.’ She motions her mum to sit and joins her on the couch. Her dad is thin and drawn in his work shirt, his sleeves undone at the cuffs. He is edgy, twitchy, in the sore place between drunk and hungover. ‘What happened?’ she asks him.

Joe stabs a finger at the watch. ‘Your mother wanted me in prison,’ he says. ‘She gave this watch to the police—’

‘I know.’ Isla cuts him off. ‘Mum wanted the police to have it, in case it was important.’

Joe scratches at his jaw. He nods, slowly. ‘You were both in on this, were you?’

Isla goes to speak but the shivers have returned and her jaw is chattering noisily. She gives a small nod.

‘The police returned the watch,’ Louisa says in her no-nonsense voice, her hands pressed together between her knees. ‘They did all that DNA business and they can’t prove it was Mandy’s.’

‘That’s a shame,’ Joe says, looking from Isla to Louisa and back. ‘That scuppered your plan, didn’t it?’

Isla rubs at her arms. Sensation is coming back to her fingertips, making them ache.

‘Why are you here, Louisa?’ Joe pushes up his shirtsleeves.

‘I thought you’d want the watch back,’ Louisa says. ‘I thought you’d be missing it.’

‘You waited till I got home.’

‘I wanted to see you.’

‘Why? Did you want to needle me?’ Spittle flies from his mouth. ‘Did you want to provoke me? Is that it?’

Louisa gets up and steps around the coffee table. ‘I have something to say to you.’

‘What’s that?’

She stands square before him, chin up, shoulders back. ‘I loved you for a very long time.’

He flinches, as if she had slapped him.

‘Decades of my life,’ she says. ‘I gave up everything to come out here with you. I left and came back because you promised you’d change. You said you couldn’t live without me. Remember that? And that was a lie.’

He draws breath to speak and she steps closer.

‘Don’t even think about denying it. Don’t you dare deny it now.’

He rocks back onto his heels, away from her.

‘I want to hear you admit it!’ Louisa shouts, pushing at his shoulder with the flat of her hand. ‘I know you aren’t going to tell me what you did to Mandy or where she is. But I want you to admit that you lied to get us back here. And you let me feel guilty for taking the money. For trying to save myself.’

Joe runs his fingertips over the lines in his face, the grooves between nose and mouth. He nods.

‘Say it!’ Louisa screams at him, pushing at his chest.

‘It’s true,’ he says, in a low voice.

Louisa pushes him again, with both hands this time, and he staggers backwards, falling into the armchair behind him. He looks up at her, sparrow-like.