“Didn’t she go to the police, if she thought her child had been stolen?”

“You don’t understand. Anna was … unreliable. A woman like her now would get help, be on all sorts of medications, but then … She fell through the cracks, and Fiddler’s Mill made her worse. I felt so sad for her. Still do.”

Heather sat back a little in the overstuffed sofa. There was no way to tell if anything she was being told was useful at all. “Did Anna know Michael Reave?”

Pamela Whittaker turned her head away. “Not that I saw. But he was an enigma. He would come and go all the time—I’ve no idea who knew him there, not really. This is all very upsetting, you realize. Bringing all this back up.”

“Pamela, I’m sorry, but I think my mother was there, too, and I really need to know why. Would you have known her? Her name was Colleen, she would have been in her teens at the time. Skinny, blond.”

“Your mother? Is this what it’s actually about? I have no time for liars, young lady.”

Abruptly, Pamela Whittaker stood up and stalked from the room. Heather watched her go, wondering if she was going to come back with a rolling pin and chase her out of the flat. She pursed her lips. She’d gone in too strong, as usual, and frightened the woman off.

Instead Pamela returned with what looked like a thick black photo album, which she passed to Heather. Her face was closed again, the hectic pink of her cheeks sunken back to the color of old cheese.

“I didn’t know anyone called Colleen, but there were a lot of us there. Here, this is my work from that period, I had copies made. This is how I file things, how I keep track. Perhaps you’ll find something in there.”

Heather opened the album. Instead of family snaps, it was filled with decent quality color prints of paintings and photographs, most of which were A4. There was a date painted on the leather cover in white Tippex: 1978–83.

“Take it, borrow it. Anything I have to say about Fiddler’s Mill is in there. It might help you, with whatever it is you are doing, Miss Evans.” She took a deep breath, hovering over Heather, clearly wanting her to leave. “And go and speak to Anna. I’ve written the address on a Post-it on the inside. I don’t think you’ll get much sense out of her—I haven’t been able to, not for a long time—but I don’t know, maybe it’ll do her good to think that someone cares about her baby, or whatever it was.” She suddenly looked to be on the verge of tears. “Terrible things happened there, Miss Evans, but forgive me, I don’t want to expose myself to that again, not even to remember the details you want.” She shuddered all over. “It’s a wound that never heals.”

Heather looked up, but Pamela Whittaker was already turning away. She thought of her mother’s suicide note again: monsters in the wood.