I shook my head, told him no. ‘Paul’s coming back from Belfast now. We’ve got to tell the girls yet. And the police want a statement, so I’ve got to go to the station, too. It’s all just a nightmare. I can’t even …’

‘It’s okay,’ he soothed, his deep soft voice washing over me. ‘You know I’m here for you whenever you need me. You do believe that, don’t you? You know how I feel about you, Rachel. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to help.’

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen – these next few days, I just don’t know …’

He sighed. ‘Don’t worry about the next few days. Just take it a day at a time, Rachel. An hour at a time if you need to. I’ll be here when you’re ready, whenever that may be. Even if it’s just for five minutes.’

‘I wish you were here now,’ I breathed down the phone.

‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘More than anything. I hate that I can’t comfort you.’

I heard footsteps on the stairs, recognised them as Beth’s. She was no doubt done with waiting for me to tell her what was going on.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I whispered into the phone and hung up, just as my daughter walked into the room, chewing on her lip, her eyes, clear blue like her sister’s, wide with concern.

There was no way to hide the fact I’d been crying. My face, I knew, would be puffy and red, my eyes bloodshot. The bed was crumpled from where I’d thrown myself onto it.

‘Mum, I’m scared …’ she said, walking towards me.

I gestured for her to sit down beside me and I pulled her into the biggest hug I could.

‘Oh, my darling girl, I need you to be brave, okay? But there’s been some really awful news.’

Chapter Six

Elizabeth

By teatime it was all over the news. This murder. How a dog walker had discovered the body of 41-year-old Clare Taylor, a civil servant, that morning.

They didn’t say on the news that she’d still been alive when the dog walker had found her. I was grateful for that. People didn’t need to know all the sordid details of everything. It was bad enough I knew them. I doubted the image would ever leave me.