Normally quite content with my own company, or at least with the company of just Izzy, I felt unsettled. My house didn’t feel quite so safe and secure any more. Knowing that something so horrific could happen so close to me had unnerved me.

I got up and walked around the old farmhouse, closing all the windows and locking the doors. I tried to recall the days when there was always someone coming or going. The blaring of music from the children’s bedroom. Paddy coming in and out of the kitchen door, filling me in on what he’d been up to in the milking shed, or down in the back fields.

Now, there was no noise and no movement bar the smallest of breezes trying to push its way through the dusty window with little luck. The air was stifling, stagnant.

‘What do you think, Izzy?’ I asked the dog, who didn’t seem to think very much at all. ‘Am I being a selfish old woman wanting to meet her family?’

Izzy trotted off in the direction of the cool kitchen floor, not that I could blame her. I followed her. It was still too early to go to bed, even though a deep, all-embracing tiredness had engulfed me. Instead, I sat down on the armchair beside the range cooker and looked out of the window over the fields. Bathed in sunshine, the sky blue with not so much as a whisper of a cloud, it seemed almost unthinkable that something so brutal had happened so close by on such a beautiful day.

It was only then that I allowed myself to cry for poor Clare Taylor and my poor Laura, who should have been able to bring her children to see me herself but who’d never do so again.

Chapter Seven

Rachel

Did I feel guilty that I texted Michael from my car just after I left the police station and asked if I could call round to his? Yes. Of course. But my need to see him had grown as the hours had passed.

Beth had been devastated; hysterical. Her cries still echoed in my ears. Molly had teetered up the stairs upon hearing the commotion and had stood, open-mouthed, her teddy hanging from her arm, tears spilling over from those beautiful blue eyes down her cheeks.

I’d told Beth I’d handle how we told Molly what had happened, but that I needed time to find the words. So both Beth and I had just hugged her, reassured her through our tears that we were just sad about a ‘grown-up thing’ and that everything was okay.