If Mia was thinking straight, she might have known she shouldn’t be sharing this story with Jess, but her stomach was churning so tightly, and her pulse was racing so wildly, that her head wasn’t straight in the slightest.

‘His wife?’

‘Janie Wood,’ Mia clarified. ‘That’s her married name. You know her as Janie Birch.’

She watched her sister’s face dropping in horror. ‘You knew this?’ she said. ‘You knew who she was and yet—’ Jess broke off, shaking her head. ‘You still went to work there?’

‘That’s why I worked for them,’ Mia cried. ‘That’s why I took the job. I wanted to get back at her, Jess. I wanted Janie to lose everything like you did—’

‘No!’ Jess yelled. ‘Stop! Don’t you dare. Don’t you try to justify it.’

‘Jess?’ Mia gasped, taking a step towards her. ‘I’m doing this for you.’

‘For me?’ she cried. ‘No, you’re not. No, you bloody well aren’t. If you were doing it for me, you would never have gone to work for them. You would have told me who she was. You wouldn’t have treated me like a child. How dare you!’ she shouted. ‘How dare you bring them back into our lives – his name into this house.’ Her sister’s hands were shaking as she clutched hard to her chair.

‘Jess, I’m sorry, but you’re not listening to me. I was going to get back at her. I was going to—’

‘Stop!’ Jess screamed, bringing her hands to her head, digging into her scalp with her fingers. ‘You’re not listening to me. I never wanted to know what the man was doing, where he was. I never wanted to know any of it, because if I did, then I had no clue what I would do about it. I wanted to forget, Mia.’

‘None of us are forgetting …’

‘And now we can’t, can we? You’ve made sure of that. Get out,’ she cried. ‘Please, just go, Mia. Get out. Leave me alone.’

‘I’m not leaving you in this state.’

‘Yes, you are,’ she hissed. ‘For once, do what I’m asking of you.’

As the fire raged behind her, Mia walked slowly across the quay towards her sister. Jess’s hands were balled in her lap, her body shivering. Mia crouched down beside her and took one of Jess’s hands in her own. ‘Don’t say a word,’ she whispered to her sister as the other two women approached. ‘Don’t say anything.’

Jess glanced over Mia’s shoulder, her face expressionless even when she saw Janie. ‘What have I done?’ she said eventually. ‘Mia, what the hell have I done?’

‘Shush,’ Mia told her, squeezing her hand tighter. ‘Stop now,’ she urged, but she already knew it was too late.