‘Gillian?’ said Evi. ‘He abused Gillian too?’ Was there something at least she’d been right about?
Jenny shrugged, then nodded. ‘I think Gwen Bannister guessed what was going on,’ she said. ‘She’d never have challenged my grandfather, but she got her daughter out of harm’s reach. More than anyone did for me.’
‘Did he start on you again, after Gillian left?’
‘When I was home from school, yes. And then when I was nineteen, his luck ran out. I got pregnant too. By the time I plucked up the courage to tell Dad, it was too late to get rid of the baby so he talked Mike into taking me on. And he persuaded Tobias to sign over control of the estate to him.’
‘I can’t believe your father colluded with all this. You must have felt so betrayed.’
Jenny dropped Evi’s hands. ‘Evi, men have been selling their daughters for wealth and power for thousands of years,’ she said. ‘You think it all stopped when we got to the twentieth century? But it was good for me too. I got out. And I got Lucy.’
Tobias’s daughter. Lucy had been the incestuous child of her great-grandfather.
‘What happened to Lucy?’ asked Evi in a small voice. ‘How did she really die?’
‘I loved her so much, Evi.’
‘I’m sure you did. Did he do it? Did Tobias kill her?’
‘She was only two when he started to look at her, Evi. She was blonde and gorgeous, just like Christiana and me when we were tiny. I’d watch his eyes going over her body. He could still drive back then, he’d come up to the house all the time. I would never change her or bathe her anywhere near him, but he always seemed to be hanging around her. I knew I couldn’t let it happen again, not to Lucy.’
‘But Lucy was different. She had you to protect her. And Mike.’
‘But I knew how clever he was. I knew he’d get to her in the end. So I started planning ways to kill him. It seemed like the only way. Does that shock you?’
Evi thought she was way beyond being shocked. ‘I think it’s very understandable that you should be so angry,’ she said.
‘I thought about smothering him in his sleep, putting something in his food, pushing him down the stairs, tricking him to come up to the Tor with me and shoving him off. But then, one day, I realized. I didn’t have to kill him to stop him getting what he wanted.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘No. I could kill her instead.’
Tom was being tugged downwards, his back jarring painfully on the stone steps.
‘What the fuck are you doin’?’ said a voice he knew. Two large hands grasped his waist and pulled him down more steps. ‘Back off, let us get down,’ the same voice instructed. Tom heard several pairs of footsteps retreating behind them and then he was in the church gallery once more.
‘Joe’s on the roof,’ he managed. ‘In the other bell tower, the one that everyone thinks is empty, but it’s not. He’s in there and he’s freezing and we have to get him down now.’
The four boys stared back at him, as if they’d captured an alien that had suddenly started giving them orders.
‘Your brother?’ Jake Knowles was the first to speak. ‘The one we’ve been looking for all day?’
‘On the roof?’ repeated Jake’s older brother, whose name Tom couldn’t remember.
Tom looked back at the four faces and felt like his heart had stopped beating. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You put him there.’
The older boy’s face twisted. ‘What the fuck do you think we are?’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ psychos?’
‘He’s actually up there?’ said Billy Aspin. ‘Alive?’
Tom nodded. ‘He’s tied up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get him out. I need to get my dad. What are you doing here? If you didn’t put him there, why are you here?’
‘We followed you in,’ said Jake. ‘We saw you and that Renshaw cretin running through the graveyard and we followed. Got fuckin’ lost in that cellar. Where’d she go?’
‘We have to get help. There’s a police …’ said Tom, realizing he had no idea what had happened to Ebba.
‘Come on,’ interrupted the eldest Knowles boy. ‘Let’s see what he’s on about.’
Evi felt like she was burning up. Funny, she’d heard patients talk about feeling terror many times. None of them had ever told her how hot it was. Or how it seemed to throw your brain into slow motion. Jenny? Jenny was the one who’d been after Millie the whole