‘You feeling okay, Mum?’ Anna didn’t know if it was being out of the house, or being at the hall itself, but her mother appeared very stressed and, right now, almost vacant – staring off into space as though she’d forgotten where she was.

‘What? Yes. Fine.’ Muriel’s attention finally turned to Anna. She gave a tight smile. ‘Trying to put things together in my head, that’s all.’

‘Maybe we should see what friends of yours are here.’ Anna searched the room for Nell, or someone she recognised. ‘It would be good for you to catch up and we could do a bit of gentle nudging, see if they’ve been getting any unwanted attention too.’

‘Nell’s not here,’ Muriel stated, without looking up.

‘Well, I’m sure there are people here you could chat with. Look, it’s filling up.’ By which Anna meant there were now more than ten people. She had another sinking feeling. Mapledon really was a dying village by the look of it – she’d yet to see anyone other than Rob, Nell’s son, and Lizzie, who were under the age of fifty. And even fifty seemed the lower end of the scale – most of the people in the hall were approaching their birthday card from the Queen.

Muriel mumbled something that Anna didn’t catch. She was beginning to think this outing was just another waste of time – her mother didn’t seem keen to mingle, and Anna didn’t recognise anyone, nor did she feel confident enough to strike up a random conversation with someone.

‘I’m going to get us a cup of tea, Mum. You want cake too?’

‘Yes, go on then. May as well now you’ve dragged me here.’

On the way to the hatch, Anna weaved deliberately slowly in between the tables, hoping to pick up something interesting in the conversations. She heard everything from, ‘I’m not able to get in and out of the bath anymore,’ to ‘The cramp is terrible in the night; I have to stand on a cold floor to ease it.’ But no mention of doll’s heads or Billy Cawley. Why weren’t people talking about it? They seemed to be openly discussing him at the shop on Saturday morning. Surely, he hadn’t already been forgotten a mere two days later.

‘Haven’t seen you for some years, Bella,’ the woman behind the hatch said, her large chins wobbling as she spoke. ‘I wasn’t sure it was you at first, but I put two and two together when I realised you were with Muriel.’

‘You have one up on me, then – I’m afraid I can’t place you.’ She was going to have to get used to people here calling her Bella. Even though she’d encouraged the use of Anna before she left, they’d known her as Bella for far longer here.

‘Angie. I’m a friend of Tina’s.’

‘Oh, yes. You do seem familiar now. I don’t remember you being Tina’s friend though.’ Anna’s recollection of Angela Moore was that Tina hated her. She wondered how, or why, they’d become friends. Unless Angie was telling her own version of the truth, of course.