‘Truly? I don’t know. But she left Fiddler’s Mill deeply changed. I won’t lie to you, Miss Evans, Anna wasn’t entirely well to begin with. In the head, I mean. But when I saw her afterwards she told me that she had got pregnant at the Mill, and she had had it, out in the woods. And then creatures came and took the baby away, stole it from her.’

‘Monsters stole her baby? That’s what she said? Did you see her pregnant while you were there?’

Pamela Whittaker heaved her thin shoulders into a shrug. ‘I wasn’t always there. I drifted in and out for a while, looking for work in the area, but I do remember there was a time when she seemed happy. She wouldn’t tell me why, but she kept her hand on her stomach a lot then. I should add,’ she looked at Heather from under her eyelashes, ‘she didn’t look pregnant to me then, and she was a tiny slip of a thing. A pregnancy would have stuck out like a bowling ball.’

‘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, blonde.’

‘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 sunk back to the colour of old cheese.