Abby was killed in the kitchen, a knife drawn across her throat and left beside her on the tiles. No prints at all on that, as if someone had held it with a sleeve pulled over their hand, or perhaps wiped it clean afterwards. Abby had fought back, she’d broken three of her long nails and had bruises to her wrists and her neck, as if someone had tried to drag her. Her long hair had been pulled out in clumps. She had not died easy. I wonder did she know her daughter was already dead upstairs? Did she think about where her baby was as she bled out on the tiles, if he was safe? There was a lot of discussion about Abby’s injuries. Could a small teenage girl like me have slashed the throat of a grown woman and dragged her along the floor, a woman who went to the gym every day? Various experts disagreed, but the District Attorney was so insistent it had to be me that eventually they found someone willing to say it was just about possible, that people can find extra strength when in the grip of extreme rage or fear.

Another theory was that Abby had done it, killed herself and the others. She was the smoker of the family, most likely to have burned Madison with a cigarette, and she was known to be erratic and to have slapped the child at least once in public. But no one can drag themselves across a floor by the hair. It just isn’t possible.

David was in the hallway, near the front door. Maybe he had tried to stop the intruder, my defenders suggested. That would mean he’d died first, presumably. Then the killer had gone through him to Abby and all the way upstairs to Madison in her bedroom. But why? Nothing had been stolen. Neither Madison nor Abby had been sexually assaulted. Who would kill a family for no reason? When David was found he had his arms over his face, as if warding off his attacker. He had been shot in the stomach with his own gun, a pistol that was kept in a drawer in his office desk.

One theory had it that David killed his wife and daughter, and presumably would have done the baby too if Carson had been there, because his production company was going under and he’d put the house up for collateral. Maybe Abby had found out. Maybe he’d thought – in some terrible twisted way – that his family would be better off dead. It was sadly common, the murder-suicide. Family destruction, they called it. But David had been shot from across the room, the blood spatter analyst confirmed. He couldn’t have fired into his own stomach, not at that angle. It was impossible.