The night sky was so dark she was lost in it, but the hard, bright eyes of the stars followed her as she turned the corner and waited at the junction of the empty road, where a four-way wooden sign told her which direction and how many miles it was to Norwich and London.

Across the still of the nightscape, she caught the rumble of tyres and, after a few minutes, the sweep of headlights.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

She only stopped counting when the car drew alongside her, the window rolled down and a familiar face – much older now, but eyes don’t change – spoke her name.

Three hours had passed since their telephone call. Brinley had driven straight to her.

The air between them was freighted with tension, these two women who had once meant something to each other. The one who was baptized Sara Carter leaned down to the window and Brinley touched her fingertips to her old friend’s face.

‘It is you. I used to think you were a ghost, you know.’

‘I suppose I was.’ Catherine gestured in the direction of the house down the lane. ‘Still am, if I’m honest. That’s why I’m hiding here.’ Her voice softened. ‘I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.’

Brinley stared down at her hands and said the words that had haunted the past two decades of her own life. ‘This is my fault too.’

Catherine walked around the car and climbed into the passenger seat. Twenty-one years of history lay between them. Of silence and regret and ruin. Of lies and half-truths, futility and waste.

Neither woman spoke, afraid of what the other might say.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Brinley eventually, breaking the stillness that had settled across them. ‘I should have done something to help you. Lying about what happened is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.’ The air lightened, a lessening of pressure. The journalist lifted her foot from the brake and began to ease forwards, towards the cottage. ‘Is that why you called me?’

Catherine’s eyes were bright with tears. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. Even my family has left me.’ She stared out of the window as the night-time fields rolled by. ‘You’re the only one who knows the truth. I don’t want to be that Sara Carter anymore. I want to be me.’

Although they shared a brutal history, Catherine was not naive. She understood she was talking to a tabloid journalist who might be recording their conversation, a dictaphone hidden in her pocket, an eye on the prize. But on the simplest of levels, she trusted her. Brinley had guarded their secret for all these years. Perhaps now it was time to let that secret go.