With a snap of her fingers: ‘Yes! Yeah, that’s it.’ Then her brow knits. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I think Ellis mentioned it. Or I saw something at the hotel. I don’t know.’

Peyton softens, casting her gaze downward. The bonfire’s heat licks my back. ‘Well, that’s all I know. All Ellis will tell me, anyway.’

Ellis is Roxy’s grandson.

Roxy had a daughter.

Roxy left behind a daughter.

My brain is practically rioting; I need an exit plan. I double over. ‘Shit.’

‘What?’

‘I’m just having really bad cramps, all of a sudden.’

‘Oh. Shoot. Wanna sit down for a sec?’

‘No, Liam’s waiting for you.’ He is, gesturing to us from beside the fire while joke-gagging himself with a marshmallow-stabbed poker. ‘I’m totally fine. I might just golf-cart it back to the room.’

‘Well, let me come with y–’

‘No,’ I snap, and she recoils. ‘Sorry. No, it’s fine, really.’

Peyton nods silently and I know I’ve scared her, maybe, but there’s no time for pleasantries. I stumble from the group, clumsy and disoriented.

Behind me, a voice booms above the roar of it all – ‘Hello, everyone!’ The roar of the crowd softens to nothing, mellows to sea on shore. Sylvia standing in the light of the fire. ‘Sorry, I know you’re all having fun, and I don’t want to keep you for too long, but …’

In the split second that I look, I swear Ellis catches my eye. Does he know that I know?

I speed-walk off the rocky shore and on to the sidewalk, down the main strip.

Roxy had a secret daughter. A daughter that nobody knew about – for a time, not even the daughter herself. I realize now that everything I thought I knew is useless in the face of what is.

How could nobody on the forums have known about this?

This information proves the most doubtful part of my suspicions – that people on Sandown know what happened to Roxy, but have kept quiet. If an entire town could keep the secret of Sylvia’s parentage while she’s living, breathing on the island, they could certainly keep quiet about the fate that befell a dead girl.

Roxy has a daughter. And a grandson.

My entire gait transforms step by step – each distracted stride further away from the fire and further into the dark sends another jolt of adrenaline zapping through me.