‘You are sweet, Joanna. And we had some good times, didn’t we, Tom? Dinners and dances and trips to Marbella. It wasn’t all grey and dismal.’

‘Yeah, those trips to Marbella were amazing,’ Mark says, with exaggerated emphasis. ‘Oh, wait, I wouldn’t know. You never brought us.’

‘Oh, Mark, you had plenty of holidays. Marbella was just for your dad and me. That’s allowed.’

Mark shakes his head at me in mock exasperation. ‘Imagine if we did that: booked a babysitter for a week and headed off to Spain without the kids. Great life they had!’

Susie makes a clicking noise with her tongue. ‘It was different back then. You didn’t have all these creches and car seats and not leaving your child outside the shop. It’s all gone very politically correct.’

Mark and I exchange another hidden eye-roll. This is why we don’t let Susie and Tom mind our kids.

‘Yep,’ says Mark. ‘Back then you could just leave your six kids with a babysitter who hardly knew her left hand from her right, crossing your fingers she didn’t lose any of them. Remember the one with the blonde straggly hair?’

‘She wasn’t that bad,’ Susie says, but her cheeks are pink now.

‘Mum, she literally forgot me at the park one day. One of the neighbours found me and brought me home. Ines O’Brien, wasn’t it, who brought me back? The Spanish lady?’

‘And aren’t you fine? No harm done.’

‘And still you kept using the same babysitter – for years after! I could have been a statistic. A child on a missing poster.’

This is my in. I take a sip of gin to coat my throat. ‘Speaking of missing children, we found out that Lily Murphy, that little girl who disappeared in 1985, used to live in our new house. Did you know the family?’

A beat. And now it’s Susie and Tom exchanging a look.

‘Your house is the Murphys’ old house?’ Susie says. ‘My goodness … gosh, of course … when you said it was Rowanbrook Drive, I should really have made the connection. That’s quite … unsettling.’

‘So you knew them back then?’

‘Well, yes. Everyone knew everyone. And everyone knew Robbie and Mary. They were the golden couple of Rowanbrook. He was very handsome, all big warm grins and dimpled cheeks.’ She smiles fondly at the memory.

‘I guess that’s where the little girl, Lily, got her dimples,’ I say, keeping my tone casual.

Susie tilts her head. ‘Are dimples hereditary? They’re hardly rare. Anyway, yes. They were the golden couple. Mary was beautiful. Stunning. A bit exotic, I suppose.’

‘Exotic?’

‘She was from California. They were like a Hollywood couple, but no airs and graces. Robbie was the friendliest man you could meet, threw the best parties. And Mary – she could come across as shy but it was more that she wasn’t a chatterbox like the rest of us. And a little nervous about fitting in, I think, though she hid it well.’ She sighs. ‘Gosh, we used to have great fun at those parties.’