I felt a wave of emotion rise up in me and I let out a shuddering breath.

‘Rachel, you need to try to keep calm or this is going to destroy you,’ Paul said.

But he didn’t stop to offer a hug. He didn’t offer to stay with Beth while I went to the police station. He just lifted his travel coffee cup and briefcase, called goodbye to the girls and left.

Chapter Thirty

Rachel

I phoned Julie as soon as I’d dropped Molly at daycare and asked her if she needed a lift to the police station. If I wasn’t mistaken, her voice was slurred as she told me that would probably be a good idea. She was at her mother’s house, had gone there after the police visit yesterday.

I arrived just after nine thirty to pick her up and saw she was waiting for me at the garden wall. From a distance she had looked well enough presented, but once I got closer the cracks were more obvious. The T-shirt she wore was crumpled, as were the loose linen trousers she was wearing. I noticed what I took to be a coffee stain on them. Strands of her hair had escaped from her ponytail and it was clear she hadn’t washed it in a few days. Her skin was dull and dry. She wore no make-up, which wasn’t like her at all, and as she climbed into the car and buckled her seat belt I could see her hands were shaking and I could smell alcohol on her breath.

When she looked at me I noticed that her eyes were bloodshot, tired.

‘You okay?’ I asked, even though it seemed obvious she was anything but.

She shrugged. ‘Not sleeping well,’ she said, looking out of the car window. ‘Brendan’s taken the kids to his parents for a few days.’

‘Maybe you should have gone too, cleared your head a bit?’ I said.

Brendan hailed from County Down on the East Coast of Ireland and a few days away might have done Julie the world of good.

She gave a strangled laugh. ‘I wasn’t exactly asked.’

I was shocked. Brendan and Julie were a great couple, always holding each other up.

‘Don’t worry, it isn’t that serious,’ she said, looking at me with tears forming in her eyes. ‘He just didn’t think the kids needed to see me getting so upset all the time. It was upsetting them. And I can hardly leave now – sure, we have the police looking to see us this morning …’

She looked back out the window, wrung her hands together. I could see she was on edge.

‘Can we go?’ she asked. ‘I just want to get this over and done with and get back home.’