“What, you’re not coming?”

“I have an appointment with an interviewee tonight. I can’t miss it. Deadlines, you know.”

Harper had sensed something dishonest in the exchange. Not lies, exactly, but Amy was holding something back. The two of them had travelled in silence until Harper pulled up outside the huge grey building in the centre of town. Then, Amy leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Harper felt a small thrill, but it seemed conciliatory somehow. She wasn’t being kissed for the sake of it; Amy was making up for something. Something she’d done, or something she was about to do?

Amy said, “You have to promise you’ll tell me what you find out, the very moment you do. Send me a message, don’t ring—I might have my phone on silent.”

“Who are you meeting?”

“It’s no one you know.” And there was the lie, shining like silver. A squeeze of the knee, and she was gone, leaving a cloud of perfume in her wake. Harper could taste it, bitter at the back of her throat. She opened the windows wide to let it out.

*   *   *

It seemed that Victoria hadn’t moved at all. Harper knocked lightly on the open door but the woman didn’t turn around. Then she said, “Hello, Mrs Settle,” but there was no response.

She moved across the room and positioned her chair so that she could sit right in front of the older woman, blocking her view of the TV. Victoria didn’t flinch; she looked right through Harper, that faint smile on her lips.

“My mum’s about your age,” she said, thinking, it must be so sad for the children, to be forgotten by their mum. The woman’s eyes were blank; she didn’t appear to know that Harper was there.

“Tell me about the woman who tried to take your babies.”

Something flickered in Victoria’s eyes, and the smile faded. Still she didn’t speak.

Harper said, “The thing is, I think whoever did it has come back. There’s a woman with baby twins, and someone took them and hid them in the woods. The mother’s very sick, and everyone thinks she did it herself. No one believes what she says, that there was someone else involved. But I do. I think it was the same person who tried to take your babies. You have to help me find them.”

Victoria’s eyes widened, and her fingers clutched at the arms of her chair. “Where are the boys? Where’s Robert, and Vinny?”

“They’re safe now. You stopped her, remember?”

“I stopped her. Yes.” Victoria smiled, satisfied, a thing done well. She raised a finger. “She was trying to take my boys. But I stopped her.”

“You kicked her.”

“Yes,” said Victoria, “I kicked her. Horrible woman. I’d do it again.”

“Where did she come from? What did she look like?”