But when someone did come up the stairs, it was Ruth, nodding to let Mary know all was OK. She’d parked the car and no one had seen. The next bit was harder. Passing Lily into Ruth’s arms, and walking away. But she did it. She ran down the stairs, out into the building site and over to the riverbank, knowing Ruth could see her through the window. She checked nobody else was watching, hunkered down and slipped the shoe from her dress pocket, behind a mound of scrubby grass. She looked for Della then, or Susie, but neither of them was nearby. Should she wait? She couldn’t wait. Ruth needed her to act. Lily needed her to act. One of the Burke twins was a little way down the riverbank.

‘Will you help me search this area?’ she called to him and he nodded, glad, she thought, to be able to contribute in a concrete way. ‘If you look around here,’ she indicated with her hand, ‘I’ll go further along.’

She moved quickly away from the shoe and began a search of the tall reeds that lined the riverbank. The shout went up even sooner than she’d hoped.

‘I found something!’ he called. She turned. In his hand was the little red shoe. After that, it got blurry again. Shouts and running and panicked faces. A shoe by a riverbank was not good. Eddie Hogan rushed over, Susie and Cynthia and Cora, the other Burke twin, Ellen and Aoife. Neighbours, strangers, two gardaí. And Robbie. Mary felt sick. She put her hands to her face, telling herself to stay calm. If Robbie was here – if everyone was here – nobody would see Ruth take Lily through the woods. And this might work. Deep breaths. She could do this.

Hours later, Mary was back in the half-built house with the barrels in front of the door, and still she had no idea who had locked Lily in. Lily, now safe in Ruth’s house. Dear God, let her be safe. Mary, going through the motions, playing a part. An impossible yet impossibly simple part to play. Shaking. Anxious. Sick. And back where it started, but without Ruth this time. This time, with Della and Fran and Tom. And Robbie. The searchers. The ones who must be convinced. Back at the room with the barrels.

‘I need to see,’ Mary said quietly, walking through the doorway. Robbie followed, holding a torch. He swung it slowly about the room, lighting up the floor and then the walls. Mary turned like a music box ballerina, following the light. Nothing. No sign that anyone had been there. At the window, she stood looking out, the night breeze blowing wisps of hair into her eyes. The scaffolding beneath the window ran the width of the house but it was too dark to see beyond the surface immediately below.

She turned to her husband. ‘Can you shine the torch out here.’ Her voice shook. Robbie did as she asked. The beam swept all the way along the wooden pathway, first one side, then the other. Nothing. Nobody. No sign anyone had been there at all.