‘About a month later, we did. Zoe changed her mind and we went to the police. They questioned Mulholland but his mother gave him an alibi. Said he was with her from 10.30, which was absolutely not true. It was too late by then anyway. There were no forensics, nothing. A week later Zoe dropped out of college. A few days after she left, I went too. I didn’t want to stay at St Olaf’s without her. Neither of us told our parents. We found a place in a squat and lived there for a few weeks, drinking and doing our best to blot things out. I got work doing odd jobs for this farming couple way out in the countryside and they let me and Zoe live in a caravan at the bottom of one of their fields.’

Her thoughts are interrupted by a ping on her phone. A text from Nevis. Sorry battery out. Heading back to the boat now. The message reminds her, if a reminder were necessary, that there are limits to how much of the story she can tell, and that, even now, she has a duty to protect Nevis from the truth. And if Nevis cannot know, then no one else can either.

‘And Mulholland?’ Alex says now.

‘I bumped into him in the street, not long afterwards. He looked grey and depressed which I was pleased about. He told me he was leaving St Olaf’s. My fault apparently. He spat at me, actually, said he’d get his own back one day. After that, neither me or Zoe ever saw him or spoke about him again. I hadn’t heard his name in two decades till Gary mentioned it.’ She looked across at Alex and wondered how she could convey the depth of her hatred for Mulholland, how the ticking impulse she had thought was long since dormant had been awakened now, and would not quiet until she had got her revenge. Mulholland hated her as much as she hated him and she knew that such darkness as existed between them could never be eliminated while they both lived. No matter how much light was shed on it, the shadow, the stain of their hatred would remain in the world. For she and Christopher to be truly free of one another, to be released from their mutual haunting, one or other of them would have to die.

Chapter 45

Nevis