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I was in Turkey, working with a relief team in the aftermath of a major earthquake, when Bryce called.

I glanced at a group of volunteers organising supplies nearby, stepped a few feet away, and picked up.

His voice was worn down to something thin and tired.

"Zara. Is it really you? I've been trying to reach you for months. Are you safe?"

"I'm busy. Say what you need to say."

"I know I was wrong. I've known it for years. I shouldn't have done any of it — the things I said when you came back, taking Diana's side, all of it." His voice dropped. "I cut things off with Lily a long time ago. She wasn't who I thought she was. I think about you. I've always thought about you."

He'd heard some of what had been happening, apparently. Enough to fill in the gaps.

My mother, back in Bristol, was not managing well. Lily had tried to use her remaining goodwill with Diana to get her brothers established in the city — suitable jobs, somewhere to stay, a foot in the door. Diana had refused. They'd argued badly. At some point in the argument, Diana had shoved Lily.

Lily fell. She miscarried.

Lily's family had arrived from wherever they were and demanded a substantial settlement. Gerald's people had got there first and ensured none of it reached me. But Diana had sold the house to pay part of the claim and was now renting a single room in Bristol and managing, apparently, on very little.

She sent messages to my old numbers regularly. I never saw them.

The family that had bled her dry for years had already moved on to other arrangements. Lily's husband — still Bryce, technically — was supporting her family's debts as well as his own, and the company his parents had built was gone.