Izzy sat forlornly at my feet. The house was quiet again. The grandchildren and my son-in-law had gone home. I hadn’t told him it was me who’d found the body. I didn’t want him worrying. He worried about me enough. I didn’t want any fuss. I’d rather just forget about it as much as possible, if the truth be told. It would have been different if Paddy were still alive. I’d have talked everything through with him and he’d have helped me to make sense of it in the way only he could. I’d been blessed to have been married to him. I only wished I could have had him in my life for longer.

An image flashed on the screen. A beautiful woman. Chestnut hair – the colour mine used to be before the grey took over. She was smiling at the camera, the faces of two others in the picture blurred. She looked nothing like the person who’d died in front of me. Nothing like that grey figure, covered in mud, almost translucent owing to blood loss. Her face twisted in fear.

That policeman who’d been out to see me earlier was speaking. Describing the crime as ‘particularly depraved’. Appealing for witnesses. Answering questions from the media. Or not answering them. It seems Clare Taylor was a well-liked woman. Police had no idea what the motive might be. How could there be any justification for this kind of attack? How could one human inflict this kind of suffering on another?

My muscles still ached. I’d taken a warm shower – too warm for this heat, really – to try to ease the stiffness. Still, I thought, I was alive. I could think and feel, even if I sometimes wished I couldn’t.

Clare Taylor. I think my daughter went to school with a few Clares. It was a very popular name the year she was born. Laura would have been just a little older than this woman, if she were still here. We’d have just celebrated her forty-second birthday. But both of them were gone. Before their time. Both horrifically. I wondered what this Clare’s story was. What her life was like. If she’d left behind a grieving husband, as Laura had. If there were two children left completely lost without her. I wondered if there was a mother out there who felt as if she’d let her daughter down, as if she more than anyone should have been able to save her.

I decided I’d contact that police officer, ask if there was any way I could meet this Clare’s mother. I wanted to talk to her. To assure her that her child hadn’t been alone when she died. That someone was with her, trying to keep her warm and comfort her. I knew that would mean something. I know I’d have loved to have heard that after my Laura died.