She escaped the question by tuning in to the sounds of the waves sweeping gently through the open windows. Diaphanous drapes fluttered in the breeze and in a fanciful part of her mind she could hear Jasmine’s bow gliding over the strings of her precious violin, haunting and ephemeral, proud and sweet. She loved to listen to her granddaughter play, to marvel at the gift she’d been blessed with that was all her own. No one in the family that Marcy knew of had passed on this artistic gene, but as soon as they’d recognized it they’d nurtured it. Her father, Joel, had bought Jasmine her first instrument when she was only three, and for her ninth birthday he’d presented her with a copy of an Il Cessol Stradivarius. He’d known by then that he wasn’t going to make it to her tenth birthday, and so had given her the magnificent piece for her to play when she was older, maybe for her first professional engagement. It had always been her most prized possession, nothing else had ever come close, but for the past few years Marcy had looked after it at her home where it was safe.

Now it was here, carefully stored beneath Jasmine’s bed, as exquisite and treasured as ever, and it wouldn’t be long, Marcy felt, before Jasmine was ready to play it in public.

Getting up from her chair, Marcy went to put on the kettle. She wasn’t sure she wanted tea, but it was giving her something to do as she tried to decide how to tell Claudia what she’d done. Her daughter and granddaughter had always come first for her, they still did, otherwise she wouldn’t be here—and she truly didn’t regret coming, in spite of the hankering for her old routines. She’d find new ones, immerse herself in charity work, maybe even find a part-time job. However, none of it could happen if the news reports about them didn’t abate.

The search for Marcus Huxley-Browne’s missing wife and stepdaughter, and now his mother-in-law, had begun to stir up so many lurid and outlandish theories that Marcy was losing sleep over them. She’d known for a while that something had to be done, but Claudia wouldn’t discuss it. For her, immersed in her world of decorative pillows and hand-painted shell accessories, it was as though it wasn’t happening. Marcy had no such distraction, and the latest report that the police were preparing to dig up the back garden of the house in Kensington meant that she’d had to act.

“Hey, Nana,” Jasmine trilled cheerfully as she came in the door, making Marcy jump.

“Hello, darling,” Marcy responded, turning to watch her granddaughter dump a heavy schoolbag and battered violin case on the table. “You’re early. I wasn’t expecting you until six.”