Even these tiny variations in language seemed to be a problem. They didn’t quite get what I meant by cupboard, or how I could hide in one, even though it was surely obvious. There had been many questions about whether I’d heard any noise in the house when I first went in, but I couldn’t remember. All I recalled was that first shocked moment of walking into the lobby, the smell of the place – hot blood, a buzz of flies already. Then a short time later, realising I had to hide, with the baby, or we were going to die.

‘It must have been so hard with those kids,’ said the woman cop, who was always nicer to me. ‘The baby crying all the time and the little girl, she had some behaviour issues, yeah?’

‘Well – sometimes, but she couldn’t help it.’

‘It must have been so tough, Casey,’ she said kindly. ‘You must have been at breaking point, huh?’

I wasn’t stupid. I knew she was trying to trick me into a confession. But it was so nice just to have someone even pretend to understand, to sympathise. Even my own lawyers didn’t care about me. They were clearly only concerned with protecting the nanny company from a lawsuit. Ruth Safran had one in the works already, apparently.

‘No one was seen going into the house, Casey. How’d you explain that?’

It was the older male cop again, the one who stared at me with exasperated eyes and snapped his chewing gum.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe they got out the back.’

‘Down the canyon?’ He was sceptical.

‘I don’t know. But someone must have done it, because I didn’t.’

‘Who, then? Who would want to hurt a little girl and a lovely lady like Abigail Safran?’

Of course they thought she was lovely. All they saw were her smiling photos, her publicity pictures, Madison’s audition tapes. Pictures never show the truth.

‘I have no idea. Apart from delivery people, the only people who came to the house were me, Marietta and José. And Marietta got fired weeks ago.’

I sensed a shift in the room, a flick of their eyes to what looked like a wall, but I knew from TV was probably a two-way mirror. José? They were looking into him?

A chink of light seemed to open up in my darkness. An oubliette, that was the word that came to mind, from a class trip to Warwick Castle. They left you there to be forgotten, that was your punishment. To live as if you were dead. The male cop leaned forward in his seat, his manner suddenly nicer. ‘Tell me about José, Casey.’