Kate stood very slowly. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This has been helpful.’

28

ROSE HAD ARRANGED to wait for her by the metal gazebo at the heart of Wandle Park in Croydon. She sat in a cream raincoat with a steel flask of tea. She had on a pair of incongruous grey Bose headphones and was evidently lost in the music, eyes closed, so that Kate had to tug at her sleeve to get her attention. ‘My God,’ Rose said, whipping off her headphones. ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’

Kate took a seat beside her. She picked up Rose’s phone from the bench. ‘Bose headphones, Spotify, eighties playlist …’

‘Fiona and Gus made it for me.’

Kate had never heard either of her children listen to the music of the 1980s and she wondered how much else about their lives with Rose she didn’t know about. ‘Great headphones,’ she said, holding them up.

‘Simon bought them.’

‘He really is a very generous man.’

‘He is.’ Rose held up the flask. ‘Tea?’

‘I think we should get on with this,’ Kate said. But Rose poured her some anyway. Kate sipped. As the evening chill descended, hurried by a cutting breeze, the warm, sweet tea was welcome.

Kate glanced around her. They were the only people sitting on the benches that circled the gazebo and the park was more or less empty but for a few lone dog-walkers hurrying home before the angry dark clouds overhead dumped their contents on an unsuspecting city. ‘This is going to be a good moment,’ Rose said.

‘I’m dreading it.’

‘Well, that’s foolish, if I may say so. You’ve single-handedly given this young girl a new life and I am sure she’ll be very grateful.’

‘It’s hard to forget that I killed her sister.’

Rose reached out to take her hand. ‘Time to look forward, not back.’

The sincerity, the love, in her aunt’s eyes was unmistakable. ‘It’s hard to look to the future when I’m still trying to make sense of the past,’ Kate said.

‘Then bring it to a conclusion and move on. Because that’s long overdue and we both know it.’

‘I have to go away tomorrow. I do genuinely think it will be for the last time.’

‘You’ve found your answer?’

‘Getting closer.’

Rose smiled. ‘I suggested the kids come and stay with us anyway, so don’t worry about it. I wish I could help you, my girl. Because I think all this risks dragging you back down into the abyss.’

‘Yes,’ Kate said simply. ‘It does.’ What was the point in denying such a self-evident truth? And to Rose of all people, with whom all deception seemed pointless.

‘What is it?’ Rose asked.

‘I just think I’ve been such an idiot,’ Kate said. ‘That’s what really gets to me. I always thought I was smart and capable, but I’m starting to feel I’ve been manipulated like a five-year-old child.’

‘In what way?’

‘Every time I feel confident of what happened, that I can see the truth, that I have the coordinates of the confusing terrain, the compass goes haywire and I’m suddenly utterly lost again. It’s as though I’m passing through the intelligence equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.’