Eve stands up, her hand to her throat. She runs from the room and Grace follows, hurrying down the stairs so quickly that afterwards she doesn’t remember that part at all. She will remember trying to push into the shed after Eve, though by the time she arrives, Eve has already disappeared into the shadowy interior. Two policemen move to stand shoulder to shoulder, barring Grace’s entry. She tries to see past them because it’s obvious that something bad, something very bad, has happened inside towards the back of the shed, where it’s too dark to see properly. A hand grips hers tightly, Melissa’s. They stand at the doorway together while the dogs bark in a deafening frenzy.

Eve

DI Gordon has placed his hands at the edge of the lid of a large freezer chest, the kind you are not supposed to have any more because of the risk to children, though this one is unplugged and, if you look closely, very slightly open, just enough space to slide a knife through. He is braced as if about to uncover horror. He doesn’t notice Eve standing just behind him.

The men behind are waiting as well, also silent. Perhaps they think she has his permission to be there because no one has suggested she leave. Even the dogs have quietened. DI Gordon is wearing gloves, transparent rubber ones like a surgeon. A bad sign. All the signs are bad. He grips the edge of the lid and heaves, but the effort is unnecessary. The freezer lid opens smoothly and easily. The smell is atrocious. He reels back, bumping into her, though he doesn’t turn round so he still doesn’t realize she is just behind him.

‘Fucking hell,’ he says loudly. His words hit her like shrapnel, the kind they use in a terrorist bomb, fragments designed to enter your body and then expand. Her mouth fills with warm fluid like blood but it has the sour taste of bile. She doesn’t want to look in the chest after all, so she shuts her eyes and moves closer, then she forces them open quickly.

At first it’s too dark to make out more than a curled shape at the bottom of the chest, thin legs twisted awkwardly together. She forces her glance to travel up the small, inert body. The face is the kind of stark white that happens after a major haemorrhage, though there is no blood to be seen apart from cuts on her legs and arms and dark crusting on her fingers and yes, an enormous bruise on her forehead that looks like a painting of a flower, a deep mauve and red one with unfurling petals. She looks lovely. A lovely dead child, like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, Babes in the Wood after all. Is there no end to the fairy tales that fit?