‘A mirror? I can’t say I have, although she’s not really one for primping and fussing, that’s for sure. But now you come to mention it,’ she looked down into the scullery, ‘the little mirror beside the door there, the one I use to check myself before I go out, that’s gone. She moved it a few weeks ago, told me the glass was cracked, which it was, in one corner. The crack wasn’t bothering me in the slightest; it was still perfectly serviceable. But she hasn’t replaced it.’

‘Any others?’

‘There’s the one in the drawing room above the fire, but we never go in there anyway, and the same goes for the parlour upstairs and there’s the one on her wardrobe, of course, but that’s usually draped with scarves and wraps. So that only leaves the one on her dressing table and the one in the downstairs bathroom, and it was still there this morning. Why are you asking about mirrors?’

‘She says she looks like her mother.’

‘Like Louise?’

‘Was that her name? She wouldn’t even say it.’

‘But she doesn’t look like her. Well, maybe a little, but she’s much more like her father, and Finlay, of course.’

‘She said that when she looks in a mirror, she can see her mother looking back at her. And she messed her hair up, rubbed it into knots and made it all tangled. I think she was trying to get rid of the person she could see in front of her.’

Isobel sat down suddenly as though all the strength had gone from her legs. ‘So Louise is back, is she? I thought that nasty piece of work was gone for ever. She made everyone’s life a misery, apart from her husband. She had to hide her evil ways from him or I’m sure he would have had something to say about it.’

‘I’m not sure I should ask any more.’

‘She never wanted Ann; she wanted another boy. Louise hated her. I mean really hated her. The thing with her hair comes from that. It was all about control. Louise used to brush Ann’s hair so hard the curls were stretched out until they were quite invisible. And she put oil on it so it would stay flat, plaited it very tightly so that no stray bits would escape. Ann wasn’t allowed ribbons or clasps like the other girls.’

‘That’s a disgusting way to treat a child!’ Keith could barely contain his anger.

‘She used to get a lot of headaches, but after Louise died, I used to do her hair for her here in the kitchen, before she went to school, and there were no more headaches. And when Mr Black remarried, Ursula would plait it into very loose braids, and loop them around her head like a halo.’