By the time Grace reaches the door, Izzy is by the large open window that comes almost to the floor, the kind that should have bars across, because if you fell you would tumble at least forty feet to the ground. Izzy is lifting Sorrel, which looks easy because the child is still so small. She is swinging her round towards the window, which is very near where she is standing. Grace moves fast but Poppy moves faster. Poppy has climbed the stairs, Eve and Melly are right behind her.

Melissa

Melissa sits in the armchair in the corner of the kitchen she designed, with its ancient dresser and the saffron walls. The room is full of the people she loves but they won’t stay much longer, they will leave soon and return to their own homes, their own lives. She’s Izzy’s mother, after all, Paul’s wife. The kind of woman to be avoided from now on.

Izzy is in the ballroom at the front of the house being guarded by a policeman. Melissa has to restrain herself from getting up and going to find her; she wants to look into her daughter’s blue eyes and ask her why. Izzy’s angry, she might be in the mood for telling, although admittedly not her mother. Izzy had stared at her with thwarted fury in the attic; she’d always got her own way, though no one, surely, could have guessed that would be murder.

Sorrel cuddles into her mother; she is holding a little blue woollen horse that Poppy bought her from the village shop last week. Poppy stands near her sister and Charley is on the floor by the stove, with Venus on her lap. Blake, looking dazed, sits next to Charley, his arm around Noah’s neck. Grace leans against the wall by the door while the policewoman settles her broad frame on to a stool next to Sorrel and Eve.

Eve holds Sorrel tightly as though she will never let her go. ‘You’re safe, my darling. You needn’t be scared.’

‘I ran upstairs to hide, cos I was frightened.’

‘I know, poppet.’

‘Last time I hid no one came.’

‘Last time?’ Eve puts her cheek on Sorrel’s hair.

‘Izzy made me go on a hide-and-seek adventure, just me and her; we walked along that railway line, well, we had to run.’ Her voice wobbles. ‘She put me in this thing and she said everyone would come and find me but they didn’t and it was dark and I couldn’t move properly and …’ The tears overflow.

Eve holds her close, murmuring into her hair