That was how it usually went. It had been different this time, though. I’d crumpled to the floor, shouting and crying, and turned to see Clare Taylor sitting at the bottom of the stairs shaking her head. She was smiling – a weird, twisted kind of smile. It unnerved me. Her hand reached out to mine, just as I’d tried to reach out to Laura. I expected not to quite get close enough. I expected us just to miss each other, just as I always missed Laura’s hand. But I felt Clare’s hand, in my dream. It was holding mine, squeezing it. I looked in her eyes and she told me again to ‘Warn them’ – I just didn’t know who ‘they’ were.

I woke with a start, a cold sweat drenching me despite the heat. My breathing was laboured. I didn’t want Clare in my dreams. I wanted Laura. I wanted to hold her hand and feel her hand. Not this woman I didn’t know. I didn’t want the trauma of what I’d shared with her to take my daughter from my dreams – no matter how harrowing those dreams had been. At least it had been Laura in them. At least she’d been alive in my imagination.

I sat up, aware of the first signs of light in the sky outside. I hugged my knees to me, looked to the empty side of the bed. I’d never get used to it. Paddy being gone. It had been seven years and still I never allowed so much as my foot to slip over to the space where he once lay. This house had known too much loss and too much pain. I sat and rocked myself until my heartbeat settled.

I’d call that DI Bradley as soon as was appropriate and I’d ask him more questions. Ask him if he was warning anyone. Surely I had a right to know that? I shouldn’t have to carry that burden on my shoulders alone.

‘The investigation is at a very sensitive stage,’ Patricia had told me after I’d sat drinking tea with the Taylors – both of them too numb with shock to talk to me. ‘I know that our methods might seem a little strange, but please bear with us,’ she told me.

I’d nodded. Agreed. Because that was what I did. I nodded and agreed with people – did what I was told. Meanwhile, I was being haunted in my dreams by that poor woman and I’d never forgive myself – ever – if anyone else got hurt.