‘Which of you is Isa Wilde?’ she asked in her deep hoarse voice.

I swallowed.

‘M-me.’

‘All right.’ She put her hands to her hips, towering over us where we sat. The hubbub in the pub seemed to die away, and I saw that people were listening, craning to see round Mary’s broad, muscular back. ‘Listen to me, my lass. I don’t know how people behave back where you were brought up, but round here, people care what’s said about them. If you go spreading lies about my boy again, I will break every bone in your body. Do you understand? I will snap them, one by one.’

I opened my mouth but I couldn’t speak. A deep, spreading shame was rising up from my gut, paralysing me.

Beside me, Kate looked shocked, and I realised she had no idea what this was all about.

‘Mary,’ she said, ‘you can’t –’

‘Keep out of it,’ Mary snapped at her. ‘Though you were in on it, I’ll be bound, all of you. I know what you’re like.’ She folded her arms and looked around our little circle, and I realised that in some perverse way she was enjoying this – enjoying our shock and upset. ‘You’re little liars all of you, and if I had charge of you, you’d be whipped.’

Kate gasped at that, and half stood, as if to fight my corner, but Mary put a heavy hand on her shoulder, physically forcing her back down against the cushions.

‘No, you don’t. I imagine that fancy school is too modern for that sort of thing, and your dad, he’s too nice for his own good, but I’m not, and if you hurt my boy again –’ she looked back at me, her sloe-dark eyes meeting mine unflinchingly – ‘you’ll live to regret the day you were born.’

And then she straightened, turned on her heel, and went out.

The door slammed behind her, loud in the sudden quiet she left behind, and then there was a gust of laughter, and the noises of the bar began to return – the clink of glasses, the deep rumble of the men at the bar. But I felt the eyes of the villagers on us, speculating about what Mary had said, and I wanted to sink into the floor.

‘Jesus!’ Kate said. Her face was white, with a flush of anger high on her cheekbones. ‘What the hell is wrong with her? Dad will be so furious when –’

‘No.’ I grabbed at her coat. ‘No, Kate, don’t. It was my fault. Don’t tell Ambrose.’

I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear for it to come out – the stupid, unworthy lie I had told. The thought of repeating that back to Ambrose’s face, seeing his disappointment …

‘Don’t tell him,’ I said. I felt tears prick at the back of my eyes, but it wasn’t sorrow – it was shame. ‘I deserved it. I deserved what she said.’

It was a mistake, that’s what I wanted to tell Mary, as I sat there speechless in front of her wrath. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry.

But I didn’t say it. And the next time I went into the post office, she served me as usual, and nothing more was said about it. But seventeen years later, as I feed my baby, and try to smile down at her laughing, chub-cheeked face, Mary Wren’s words ring in my ears, and I think, I was right. I did deserve them. We all did.

Little liars.

KATE, THEA AND Fatima are seated around the scrub-top table as I burst back into the Mill, hot and footsore, and my throat dry as dust.

Shadow barks a short sharp warning as the door crashes back against the wall, making the cups on the dresser rattle, and the picture frames bang against the wall in sympathy.

‘Isa!’ Fatima says, her face surprised as she looks up from her plate. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

‘I have. Why didn’t you tell us, Kate?’

The words were a question in my head. Spoken, they sound like an accusation.

‘Tell you what?’ Kate stands, full of bewildered concern. ‘Isa, did you just walk all the way to Salten and back in three hours? You must be exhausted. Did you take a bottle of water?’

‘Fuck the water,’ I say angrily, but when she brings me a glass from the tap and sets it gently down on the table, I have to swallow against the pain in my throat before I can drink.

I take a sip and then a gulp, and then slump on the sofa. Fatima has loaded up a plate with salad for me, and now she brings it over.

‘What happened?’ She sits down beside me on the sofa, holding the plate, and her face is worried. ‘Did you say you saw a ghost?’

‘Yes, I saw a ghost.’ I look over Fatima’s head, straight at Kate. ‘I saw Luc Rochefort in the village.’

Kate’s face crumples, before I’ve even finished the sentence, and she sits abruptly on the edge of the sofa as if she doesn’t completely trust her legs.

‘Shit.’

‘Luc?’ Fatima looks from me to Kate. ‘But I thought he went back to France after …’

Kate makes an unhappy movement with her head, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s a nod or a shake, or a combination of both.

‘What’s happened to him, Kate?’ I hug Freya closer, thinking of his closed, impassive face, the fury I felt radiating out of him in the small post office. ‘He was …’

‘Angry,’ she finishes. Her face is pale, but her hands, as she reaches in her pocket for her tobacco, are steady. ‘Right?’

‘That’s an understatement. What happened?’

She begins to roll up, very slowly and deliberately, and I remember this from school, how Kate would always take her time, she would never be hurried into an answer. The more difficult the question, the longer she would pause, before replying.

Thea puts down her fork, picks up her wine and cigarette case, and comes over too.

‘Come on, Kate.’ She sits on the bare boards at our feet, and I have a sudden, painful memory of all the nights we spent like this, curled together on the sofa, watching the river, the flames, smoking, laughing, talking …

There is no laughter now, only the rustle of Rizlas as Kate rolls back and forth on her knee, biting her lip. When the cigarette is done, she licks the paper, and then she speaks.

‘He did go back to France. But not … willingly.’

‘What do you mean?’ Thea demands. She taps her cigarette case against the floorboard, and looks at Freya, and I know she wants to smoke, but is waiting until Freya is out of the room.

Kate sighs, and puts her bare feet up onto the sofa, beside Fatima’s hip, and she pushes the loose strands of hair off her face.

‘I don’t know how much you knew about Luc’s background … you know Dad and Luc’s mother, Mireille, were together, years back, right? And they lived with us here.’

I nod, we knew all this. Luc and Kate were toddlers – almost too small to remember, Kate said, although she had faint recollections of parties by the river, Luc falling in once when he was too little to swim.

‘When Dad and Mireille broke up, Mireille took Luc back to France, and we didn’t see him for several years, and then Dad got a call from Mireille – she couldn’t cope with Luc, he was running wild, social services were involved – could he come and spend the summer holidays here, give her a break? You know Dad, he said yes of course. Well, when Luc got here, it turned out that there was maybe a bit more to the story than Mireille had said. Luc was acting out, but there were … reasons. Mireille had her own problems … she’d started shooting up again, and, well, she maybe hadn’t been the best parent to Luc.’

‘What about Luc’s dad?’ Fatima asks. ‘Didn’t he have anything to say about his son disappearing off to England to stay with a strange man?’

Kate shrugs.

‘I don’t know if there was a dad. From what Luc said, Mireille was pretty fucked up when she had him. I’m not sure if she ever knew …’

She trails off and then takes a breath, and starts again.

‘Anyway, he came back to live with us when we were maybe thirteen, fourteen? And the holidays turned into a term … and the term turned into a year … and then another … and then somehow Luc was enrolled at the secondary school in Hampton’s Lee and living with us full-time, and you know … he was doing well. He was happy, I guess.’