His hair’s a bit longer and curls around the nape of his neck. Is he a friend? A colleague? For so long, I’ve lived a solitary life with no one but Peg to rely on. I’ve forgotten how friendship works.

‘Are you angry?’ I say. ‘That I went to Norfolk by myself?’

He uncaps two bottles. Beer froths up and out. He passes one to me and drinks from the other, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘I was, at first. I mean, we’d been on the story together. We were on the same team. I didn’t expect you to have such a ruthless streak.’ He looks away, the betrayal still tender. ‘But then I stopped caring about that and started caring that you’d been hurt.’

‘Why didn’t you get in touch sooner?’

He shifts in the armchair, awkward at the question. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me. I was worried I’d said something to upset you and that’s why you went off on the story by yourself.’ His eyes meet mine. ‘But I couldn’t stay away.’

He’s broken up with his girlfriend, he says. He’s heard the new Italian around the corner from me is good. We smile at each other, hope softening our edges.

So that’s it, I guess. Brinley Booth is typing ends on her story.

Sara Carter has been released from the prison of her past. My father and I are talking again. Shannon Carter is dead.

And buried with her, in the silt and dirt, is the last secret of Hilltop House.

A lightning strike can rewire the brain. Trigger severe bouts of depression. Personality changes. The kind of pressure that can break a grieving family – a daughter and her father – apart.

The strike on Saltbox Hill – coupled with the emotional strain of my mother’s death and the brutality I’d witnessed from my oldest friend – was the reason I struggled so much in the months that followed that devastating April weekend. Fired my need to run from the village, to move to London to be with Aunt Peg, to create a distance between myself and my past.

At least, that’s what everyone believed.

And it was true – part of it, anyway. Part, but not all. Because there was another reason. A darker reason.

Shannon didn’t kill her mother.

I did.

The rain-dirty pavement shines in the glow of the street lamps. Empty streets and empty pockets, the post-December blues. The last train grinds through the darkness and the Canary Wharf lights blink on and off. Lawrie left hours ago, and I’m alone again. In this, I will always be alone.