Patrick couldn’t help but laugh.

‘They’re bambinos,’ Carmella said. ‘Him and Alice. They think they’re all grown up but they’re just children.’

When Patrick returned to the living room a few minutes later, holding two steaming cups of tea, each containing three spoonfuls of sugar, Helen was wiping her face with a tissue, the TV was off and the couple sat with their hips touching, facing forward. There was a large wet patch on Sean’s chest.

‘I’m sorry,’ Helen said in a raw voice.

Patrick put the mugs of tea on the coffee table and sat in the armchair opposite. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

‘I’m going to need to ask you those questions. We may have covered some of this before but it’s important now we’re looking at everything from a different angle.’ He deliberately avoided using cold words like ‘case’ and ‘investigation’.

Both Philipses nodded.

He paused for a moment before deciding how to begin. He didn’t want Sean to leap to his daughter’s defence from the first moment. ‘How often did you go out leaving Alice looking after Frankie?’

Sean answered. ‘Once in a blue moon. We hardly ever get out.’

‘I’m never going out and leaving her again,’ Helen said quietly.

‘So it was an unusual event? You didn’t have a regular night that somebody else might know about?’

‘God. No, not at all,’ said Sean.

Patrick had his notebook out. These were warm-up questions whose answers he didn’t expect to be illuminating, but he made a show of noting them anyway.

‘Who knew you were going out?’

Sean said, ‘I don’t know. I think I told a couple of people at work, made a comment about how we were actually going to go out for a change.’

‘What about Facebook or Twitter? Did you announce it on there?’

Helen and Sean looked at each other questioningly. Sean said, ‘I hardly ever update my Facebook. I don’t think I put anything on there. And I only use Twitter for business.’

‘I’m sure I didn’t either,’ Helen said.

‘So the only people who knew you were going out were you – the family – plus a couple of friends and colleagues? Did you pre-book the restaurant? Go there in a cab?’

‘Yes to the booking. No to the cab – we walked. It’s only ten minutes’ walk. It was a nice evening. We gave you those details before.’

‘Of course. But bear with me.’ Patrick knew that they had already spoken to the restaurant, checked out the employees, and that no-one else was under suspicion.

‘So the only other people who would have known would be those who Alice told,’ Patrick stated. ‘Which could be any number of her friends.’

‘I guess so,’ Sean said. ‘But we can’t ask her at the moment, can we?’