Harper looked up at them both and gave a friendly smile. “Sorry. My mistake. Let’s go through what happened on the day the twins were taken. You decided to go for a stroll in the woods. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I heard someone screaming about their babies being taken. Then a few minutes later I heard the sirens, and I saw some police officers. I knew what had happened, from what she was yelling. I knew someone had snatched those babies.”

“None of my officers said they saw you in the woods.”

“I was on the other side of the river. There’s not really a footpath there. And anyway, I hid from them.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I saw that it was Patrick’s wife there, and I thought people would think the worst. I didn’t want to be seen.”

“Well, of course you wouldn’t, if you’d taken the stroller.”

“I didn’t take it. Do you want to hear this, or not?”

“Sure. Carry on.”

“I hid for a while, behind a fallen tree, and then when things seemed to calm down and the screaming had stopped, I walked on. I thought I saw another officer, so I went to hide in the old mill wheel tower, and that’s where I found them. They were pushed all the way in, out of sight. You wouldn’t have seen them unless you went right inside. At first I thought the stroller must have been empty, but there they were. It was weird, they weren’t crying or anything. They just stared at me.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I couldn’t leave them there, could I? I’m not a monster. I hauled the stroller out and pushed it towards the river, the shallow part that I thought I could get across, because it would have been much quicker than going all the way up to the bridge and back. But by then, the water had started rising, and it wasn’t as easy as I’d thought it would be. It must have started raining in the peaks just before, so the river had already swelled before the storm came. I got stuck. The rest, you already know.”

“What I still don’t know is why you followed Lauren to the valley in the first place.”

“For crying out loud, Harper,” said Crace. He turned to Natasha. “Don’t answer that.”

“I didn’t follow her. I just went there. It was a coincidence.”

Harper flipped the cover from the tablet in front of her, swiped it a few times, placed it back on the table.