Laura looks at me not with the same defiance as Mia, but with something I recognise all the same. It’s the look my mother used to give me: disgust. Like there is something wrong with me; like she hates me, like she sees the devil in me.

I blink in surprise. Has Laura been pretending all this time to love me? How has she hidden it so well? I thought I knew her. I thought she was different.

I lift a hand to touch her cheek but she pulls away and my hand flops to the ground. ‘You were my angel,’ I say to her. ‘You were meant to save me.’

‘Guess you’re going to Hell then,’ she says.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Laura

We stand up and watch Liam as he slowly bleeds out. Still, I feel nothing except relief. I understand finally what the Celts were thinking when it came to meting out justice to those who’d committed crimes against the tribe.

When Liam finally takes his last breath, it feels as if a great dark weight has been lifted off of me. I feel unshackled. The fear that’s crippled me these last months dissolves like my breath in the cold night air. It’s there one moment, gone the next. I could take flight.

I turn to Mia, who stands beside me like a statue, head bent, not taking her gaze off Liam’s face. She grinds her teeth and breathes hard as she looks down on Liam’s body and her shoulders start to shake violently. I put my arm around her. ‘Are you OK?’ I say.

She clings to me. ‘No.’

I hold her tightly. ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘We did it.’

‘He isn’t coming back,’ she says. She pulls back to look at me and I see that she doesn’t mean Liam.

‘Will?’ I ask.

She nods, tears falling down her cheeks. I soothe her. She swallows hard and wipes her arm across her face.

‘Here,’ I say to her.

She looks down. I’m holding out her engagement ring. She takes it, her face stricken, before she fights off the sadness and smiles at me through her tears. She slips the ring onto her finger. ‘Thank you,’ she says. I unclasp the Celtic cross and give that back to her too. Her bottom lip wobbles, but only for a moment, and then her expression hardens.

‘You should go,’ I say.

‘I know,’ she answers. ‘But what about you?’ She glances down at the body.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I tell her, and I mean it.

Mia and I hug one last time before she walks off through the woods towards the cliffs, where she’ll find her boat and pack her things and leave, like the ghost she is.

In a few weeks’ time we’ll meet again. She’s given me back my life and I’ll give her back her dog.

Chapter Thirty-Six