‘Ann, I know she didn’t tell you who hurt her, but did she say any more about what had actually happened?’

‘She didn’t have to say the word for me to know that she had been raped. She was torn, and bleeding from inside her, bleeding too much for it to be normal …’

‘And you didn’t call a doctor?’ I said.

‘I wanted to, but I didn’t. She said that she’d die of shame if anyone knew. I understood what she meant, though it makes no sense to me now, but back then, and with herself and Sean against me, well, I was weak. It was a mistake, the biggest one I ever made. I was her mother. I should have done better by her. I failed her when she needed me most.

‘And I threw out the bloody sheets and the stained clothes that she’d been wearing and I dressed her in her pyjamas like she was my baby again. That means there’s no evidence, doesn’t it? Nothing. The mobile phone she was using is long gone. Sometime after, she put it in the sink and covered it in water to destroy it. I threw it away. Thought it was useless. If I’d kept any of the stuff there might be some hope of tracing him from phone records or DNA, I’m sure, even now, wouldn’t there?’

‘Hard to say,’ I said. ‘And what’s done is done. We need to work with what we have. Any idea where she went that night?’

‘Not a clue. And the way it was, that we couldn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t ask Jessica or I was afraid … I don’t know … Maybe the truth is that for a while I might have thought it was Deirdre’s fault too. And that’s the worst thing, that I thought badly of her.’

‘Her attacker groomed her,’ I said. ‘Whether it was Gill or someone else, Deirdre was led into a situation that turned into something she didn’t want.’

‘I know. But I wish I had seen it at the time, or even that I could help in some way now,’ Ann said.

‘You might be able to help me with these things,’ I said. ‘I found them in at the back of the desk drawers in her room. Did you know there was something hidden there?’

Ann shook her head. I took the bagged box and contents out of my handbag and handed them to Ann, one at a time. First the coaster from Muskerry Castle.

‘Do you have any idea why Deirdre would have this?’

‘No,’ Ann said. ‘You’d need to be half a millionaire to go to a place like that. I’m sure Deirdre was never there.’

The next item was the badge. Ann shook her head again.

‘I’ve never seen this before,’ she said. ‘I’ve no idea what it is.’