I’d walked this same route towards Ketton House Farm with my parents all those years ago. The night of Barbara’s fortieth birthday party.

‘Come on, Margaret. We’re going to be late!’

My mother’s voice returns to me from that golden summer.

I had spent hours getting ready. Ben was home from university and was going to be at the party. I had to look perfect. In the end I had opted for a black velvet dress that clung to my body like a second skin. My hair was scooped back in a sophisticated chignon and I’d painstakingly lined my eyes with smoky black kohl.

But Mum didn’t like seeing me dressed up and had wanted me to change.

‘Leave her be, Marion,’ my dad had said, shaking his head at my mother. ‘She looks lovely. A proper Audrey Hepburn.’

I shiver as I think of what followed. Unhinged; that’s what Barbara had yelled as they took me away.

When I reach the river path the air grows cooler. I zip up my thin jacket and head towards the spot: the small patch of riverbank where the two alder trees meet.

When I get there I’m overcome with the scent of meadowsweet. It smells just like marzipan, intensified by the dampness in the air. The scent takes me back to the beautiful spring morning when Elspeth and her classmates took part in the annual May procession. She had spent weeks perfecting the flower garland that she would wear on her head. She wanted to have meadowsweet in it because she liked the fuzzy, cloud-like petals; thought they looked like angel hair. Like everything Elspeth made, it had to be just so. I can hear her little voice singing the hymn to the May Queen as I walk.

‘Bring flowers of the rarest, bring blossoms the fairest …’

I was so proud of her that day. She had been chosen to lead the procession. In the past this would have resulted in a meltdown of epic proportions, but something had changed in Elspeth in her final few months, she had become more confident. I’d taken lots of photos on my phone and messaged them to Sean who couldn’t be there, even though it was a Saturday. He hadn’t replied to those messages and at the time I thought nothing of it. Now as I stand here in the shadow of the two alder trees I wonder if he was with Freya Nielssen that day, if he was planning his escape. I see my beautiful girl in her shimmering white dress, her auburn hair threaded with blossoms, and a chill courses through me. Less than two weeks later she was dead.