That same morning, she’d watched from the upstairs window as the little children were taken away. A woman she didn’t recognize came and put the boy and the little girl into the back seat of a Toyota Corolla. The policewoman who had been minding the children slammed the car boot closed on the suitcases and bags that had been crammed inside. The little girl was crying. Hilary heard the shrillness of her screaming, the hard, accusatory pitch of it, and for the first time in the forty-eight hours since Charlotte’s death she’d felt a cold pang of fear.

What have we done? she thought, her hand held to her mouth.

The police did not return that day, and when she sat down to dinner opposite Greg that evening, she asked him: ‘What do you think will happen to those children?’

He was cutting into the lamb chop on his plate, sawing it up into neat little triangles. ‘I expect some relative will take care of them.’

‘I saw a woman come and take them away. A woman in a red car.’

‘Charlotte’s sister, I expect.’

Hilary hadn’t known Charlotte had a sister. Was briefly surprised to find that Greg did.

‘She lives in Cork, I believe,’ he added, and this brought a new plunge of guilt, of quavering doubt.

‘But that’s miles away.’

He didn’t answer, just kept pushing meat into his mouth.

It wasn’t right – those children being dragged all the way to the other side of the country. What about Anton? Didn’t he have a right to have them near? ‘You don’t suppose,’ she began tentatively, ‘that we could offer to take them?’

His eyes shot up to meet hers. It made her nervous. Shakily, she went on: ‘I mean, just until things are sorted out. Just until he’s released.’

It was then that Greg put down his knife and fork and stared hard at her. ‘What are you talking about? The man has murdered his wife. By the time the state allows him to take care of his children again, they’ll be fully grown.’

She had gone to pieces then. She couldn’t help it. Days of sobbing, or thrashing around on her bed in despair, until finally Greg had taken some leave, booked a break at a B-and-B in Wexford and swept her away. Three days’ walking on the beach at Curracloe, turning the facts over in her head, trying to tease out every possibility, attempting to make a plan. By the time they returned, she was calm and Anton was in custody. A fact she was forced to accept. A fact she had to try to live with.

Once, when they were together, she had told Anton in a moment of candour: ‘I feel like I’ve waited my whole life for you.’