Twigs snapped beneath their feet as they walked, and the cry of an owl speared the night. All around them, leafless branches rattled in a sudden gust of wind.

‘You were wrong about your mother.’ Joanne broke their silence. ‘She wasn’t poisoning you.’

A lump rose to Dawn’s throat. Joanne seemed determined to say her piece.

‘All this time, Lloyd tried to protect you. He wanted to take you in, to raise you himself. But I put my foot down. It was bad enough, him and Susan having an affair. I didn’t want to be reminded of it every day.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Dawn said. ‘Susan tortured me – I was dying under her care.’

‘Where do you think the drugs came from?’ Joanne stepped around a dead tree branch as they walked down the leaf-strewn path.

‘She was a nurse.’

‘Not after you were born. Susan had a brain injury. She hadn’t practised in years. Martin was a pharmaceutical rep, for God’s sake!’

‘No,’ Dawn whispered. It couldn’t be true.

‘Martin was a foster child. He had . . . attachment issues. Every home that took him in sent him back within weeks. When he was sixteen, his foster parents moved away without telling him. He came home from school and they were gone. Just upped and left. Can you imagine that?’

Martin’s last argument with Susan rose from the recesses of Dawn’s mind. You want to leave me. Just like the others. One day I’ll come home and you’ll both be gone.

‘He drugged you and your mother to keep you both at home,’ Joanne continued. ‘She was a victim of domestic abuse – you both were. He kept his gun in the kitchen – his way of keeping control when he was home.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Dawn said, unable to process the news. Yet . . . she recalled the look of fear on Susan’s face every time her father came home. How her own protests at being drugged had fallen on deaf ears. The night he had promised her that she would be cured . . . as soon as he was home for good. The effects of the drugs were always more debilitating when he was away.

She tuned back into Joanne’s narrative.

‘You have to remember, Susan was brain-damaged after her accident. Martin told her what to think, who to see. Her long-term memory was shot. Lloyd did the maths. He knew you were his.’ She met Dawn’s gaze. ‘But Susan didn’t remember their affair. Even her money . . . She had fifty thousand pounds in the bank that she didn’t know she had. Martin had power of attorney. He controlled everything.’

Everything Joanne said slotted into place. No wonder Susan had encouraged fundraisers, thinking she was penniless. But Joanne and Lloyd had been childhood sweethearts. His infidelity must have stung.

‘Is that why he burned the bodies? Made it all disappear? Because he was being protective of me?’