“Calm down, Mum, you’re safe now. I’m here, I’m right here. We’re all grown up now, there’s no danger.”

Victoria seemed to take some comfort from her son’s words. She let him pat her knee and grew gradually calmer.

“You should probably go,” he said to Harper and Amy. Harper nodded and took a step towards the door.

“They were named for the rivers,” murmured Victoria.

“What was that, Mum?”

“Their names are Bishop and Selver,” she said.

“The rivers?” said Robert, shrugging at Harper, see, this is what it’s like. “That’s right, Mum, the rivers are called the Bishop and the Selver. That’s right. Then there’s the Don, and the Loxley …”

Victoria pushed her son’s hands off her lap. “I’m not talking about rivers,” she said, “I mean the twins. That horrid woman’s twins. ‘Remember their names,’ she said to me. Their names are Bishop and Selver. I’ve never forgotten. I kicked her. I’d do it again.”

Harper and Amy waited for a long time, but Victoria didn’t say anything more.

*   *   *

Back in the car, Amy said, “What do you think?”

“I felt for her,” said Harper, “but I’ve no idea what she was saying. The Bishop and the Selver? Some kind of sordid forced child exchange?”

“Yes. Very weird.”

“Funny names for kids. Who’d call their babies those names?”

“I can look them up if you like, see how many Bishops and Selvers are on the electoral register. Maybe we can find the perpetrator that way.”

“No,” said Harper, “don’t worry. I think it’s pretty clear she was confused. Maybe she was remembering that the rivers all dried up in that heat wave, when she had her babies, and the words got mixed up somehow.”

Amy said, “Well, sorry about that, Joanna. Another dead end.”

“There’s still the CCTV from the hospital. And the recording from the 999 call. I just need to find a way to get them analysed. Then we’ll have the full picture, and perhaps a new lead on a suspect. If only Thrupp wasn’t such a tight arse.”

Amy got out her phone and began to search through her contacts.

“Leave it with me,” she said. “I think I know someone who can help us.”

Chapter 33

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

In the daytime, most of the rooms were unlocked for freedom of movement within the unit. Lauren’s room was not one of them, but she knew that the other patients had more liberty than she did. She’d seen them coming and going, unchaperoned, when she herself was being led as if in shackles to the day room, or up to the therapy room.