With mounting horror, Cooper realized that he was thinking of the pantomime from a couple of nights before. There was a startling similarity between the priest in his vestments intoning the opening lines of the service and the Pedlar stepping out on to the stage at the Royal Theatre for the first scene of Aladdin.

Oh, I’m a man from a distant land,

A place where camels roam

And if they don’t like your face, they’ll cut off

your hand …

Liz gave him a warning look. Maybe he’d let a smile show, or twitched in the wrong way. Cooper took a breath and tried to control himself. This was not the way to behave in church.

After a couple of hymns, the vicar lit a candle and called for ‘The Decision’. Raggedly, the congregation answered his questions, reading the replies from their order of service.

‘To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him. Do you reject the Devil and all rebellion against God?’

Cooper found himself mentally drifting away from the church. His mouth was still moving as if he was giving the replies with everyone else. But his mind was a mile away, in the lounge at The Oaks care home, where the staff would be serving a glass of sherry soon and the residents would be looking forward to their lunch.

‘Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil? Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?’

He felt sure those words would really mean something to Raymond Sutton. Far more than they meant to him, or to any of the people squirming impatiently in their pews.

Sins that separate us from God and neighbour.

What sins were committed at Pity Wood Farm that had separated the Suttons from their neighbours, and from God?

Cooper suddenly had a terrible intuition of the torment that Raymond Sutton must have been going through all this time. Whatever had happened at Pity Wood, he’d either been a part of it, or he’d acted as a passive witness. It was surely impossible for him to have lived at the farm and not been aware of what went on. Raymond must have known every inch of that place like the back of his hand, as anyone would who’d lived on a farm his entire life.

Liz nudged him hard, and Cooper realized that the congregation was about to go into another hymn, and he was clutching the wrong book, his eyes distant, his mind wandering.

‘Pay attention,’ she said.

‘Sorry.’