The ticking of the ’copter blades fades once more into the night.

Honor feels weak, the rifle suddenly an unbearable burden, something she can barely carry. All the weight she has shouldered, to protect Nevis from exactly this. The thing no child should ever have to know: the knowledge that she only exists because of an act of violence.

Nevis moves her head a quarter turn, eyes blade across, narrow, then return to Mulholland. ‘I found Zoe’s note, the one she wrote before she died. At the end of last summer. You left it in that book of Greek myths, the one you used to read when I was a kid. That’s how I found out you’d been lying to me all these years.’

Honor blinks and swallows, a small muscle in her right eye flickering like a broken light. No wonder Nevis has been so distant. To find out that way. Of course Honor blames herself. It was she who left the letter in the book. Was it carelessness or cowardice? Is there a difference? How can she tell Nevis, now, in the midst of all this? How can she explain? Both of them so young, Zoe depressed, all three holed up in the caravan on the edge of a field, the baby colicky from the damp, by night all three in the same bed, keeping each other warm, by day Honor working shifts in the shitty café, no help, too young to know that help was possible.

At the bottom of it all, Mulholland, that malevolent presence. She wants the bastard dead, needs it. In the corner of her eye she sees blue lights flicker across the bridge. Mulholland is propped up on one hand, his bent leg lying limp in front. She could shoot him, but what then? Claim it was self-defence? Against a man who would have been unable to defend himself let alone attack?

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Nevis cries. ‘Didn’t you think I had a right to know? All these years you telling me my mother died in a traffic accident, that she didn’t even know my father’s name. And now this.’

She holds her breath and swallows but the blood is screaming in her veins. ‘I did it to protect you. Maybe that was wrong. Your mother loved you, Nevis.’

‘Not enough to hang around.’

Ahead of them, in the dim light, Mulholland stirs and, seizing his opportunity, shouts, ‘This woman is nothing to you, Nevis. You and I are blood.’

Silence.

Now is the time, Honor thinks. The truth has done its time. It will not be held prisoner any longer. She says, ‘When this man was fifteen, Nevis, he raped your mother.’

Nevis steps back. ‘What?’