‘You’ve done what?’

Leah looked at him in shock. She had never expected him to come clean to anyone; she had never thought he would be prepared to risk everything he had for her. Then she realised this wasn’t about her; he was protecting himself.

She sank onto one of the wicker seats in the corner of the summer house, her body heavy with the weight of her injuries. ‘Was it you? Were you driving that car?’

‘I had to tell them,’ Leighton told her, not answering the question. ‘The police thought we were sleeping together. They’ve got it into their heads that Keira found out about us and that’s why she died. They asked if I’d ever slept with her. They probably thought I was the father of her child. What else was I supposed to do?’

‘Keira?’ Leah gripped the arm of the wicker chair as though stopping herself from falling.

‘You shouldn’t be here – I’m not supposed to have contact with you. Should you even be out of hospital yet?’ Leighton asked. He obviously didn’t really care what sort of state she was in; he just wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going to keel over on his property.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, her bottom lip jutting in a pout.

‘You can’t see me any more. This … all of it … it’s over.’

Leah looked at him. The smile that crept over her face seemingly had a life of its own. She couldn’t believe that after everything, all he could think of was himself. It didn’t matter that a girl was dead or that Leah was being kept in the shadows by his lies. All that mattered to Leighton was Leighton. She had been naïve to assume – naïve to hope – that this might ever change.

‘Do you love me?’

The question seemed to set him off balance. He looked at her in horror, as though she’d just confessed to him that she’d already told his wife all his dirty secrets. The past life he’d kept hidden all these years. The daughter he had thought he would be able to write out of his life and simply forget about.

He had needed reminding. He had forgotten about her and he had needed to remember that she existed. That he had responsibilities – years of them – that he had chosen to ignore. Now she was here, she wasn’t going anywhere.

He didn’t answer her. He didn’t even open his mouth and try to say something, even if that something might be a lie. Leah thought she might have preferred a lie; it might have softened the blow somehow. This – this silence – was almost more than she was able to bear. It was an insult. He didn’t respect her enough to lie to her.

She stood. ‘Do you love me?’ she asked again, as though his silence hadn’t already answered the question for her. ‘Like Isobel. Like Olivia. You love them, don’t you?’

Leighton pressed a hand to his head, closing his eyes and blocking out the sight of her. ‘You need to leave, Leah. This has all gone too far. I should never have let it get to this point.’

‘And if I won’t?’ She gripped him by the wrist, her face defiant. She wouldn’t be fobbed off by him, not this time. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.

Her body tensed as he moved towards her and shook his hand free.

‘No,’ he said suddenly. ‘No, Leah, I don’t love you. You’re not my daughter, not like they are. You never will be. Look at what you do to people. You ruin lives. You are a hateful, devious, manipulative little cow. How could anyone love you?’

His words were a slap to the face. She could already feel tears, hot and sharp, burning at her eyes. It was just moments before their heat was coursing down her cheeks.

But there was no sympathy from him. If anything, her tears made him angrier. He moved forward, suddenly towering above her, and put a hand on either shoulder, his weight holding her steady. ‘I could have told them plenty more,’ he said, his voice soft and threatening. ‘But I didn’t. And you should be grateful for that.’

‘Grateful?’ Leah laughed bitterly. ‘Oh. In that case, thank you. Thank you so much.’

His weight was pressing more heavily on her shoulders, his thumbs digging into her skin, returning to the place where he had already bruised her days earlier. In that moment, she was scared of him. Behind his eyes, she could see how much he hated her. It hurt, but it was almost a good kind of pain; the kind of pain that reminded her she could still feel something.

She studied the darkness in his eyes and wondered if the same hands that were pressing down on her were the ones responsible for ending Tom’s life. But why? It didn’t make any sense.

He moved his right hand away, and for the briefest moment Leah thought he was going to hit her. His face had reddened, crimson flooding his unnaturally pale skin.

‘Why don’t you take this as the warning it probably is,’ he suggested, stepping back from her. ‘You’ve been given enough already – how many more do you think you’ll get?’

All Leah heard in his words was a challenge. She had never liked to be told what she could or couldn’t do; even as a young child, she had preferred things on her own terms or not at all. The problem was, things rarely happened that way. She had become used to disappointment, programmed to it by the succession of miserable events that had shaped her childhood. She had been taught she should accept disappointment; she should accept coming second best, although no one had ever told her the reason why.

Why should she always come last?

Why should she always be the one to go without?

Forgetting the agony that flooded her body, she rushed towards Leighton and reached for the neck of his cotton T-shirt. His reactions were delayed – he had been expecting her to leave, an admission of eventual defeat – and he wasn’t quick enough to resist her. He was taller than her, but on tiptoes she was able to reach him easily. Her mouth met his, and she tried to part his lips with her tongue, but he shoved her back, sending her falling against the wicker chair.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

He ran the back of his hand across his mouth, trying to wipe away the taste of her. He was shaking; no longer with anger, but with something else. Disgust. Leah put a hand to her shoulder, tentatively tracing her fingertips across the tender patch of skin he had bruised.

‘There’s something wrong with you,’ he said accusingly, his eyes boring into hers and his body shaking with the shock of her attack. ‘You are seriously fucked up, you realise that?’

A sob caught in the back of Leah’s throat. She could feel anger rising in the pit of her stomach, bubbling inside her; boiling. She pushed the heel of her right hand against her eye, smudging her mascara in a black smear. When she looked back at him, she was expecting something different. Sympathy. Forgiveness, maybe.

Instead, she saw nothing but contempt.

She ran from the summer house, slamming the door shut behind her.