In the house behind the garage Maggie sometimes found the tension almost unbearable. Work was no relief with the old men gloatingly reconstructing the crimes as they slurped their beer. Often, when the boys came home from school, she ran away with them and the dogs to the beach. There they would chase together into the wind, shouting to each other, laughing, trying to forget the solemn silence in the house, the sound of Olive crying to herself in her bedroom when she thought no-one was listening. The boys made death-defying leaps from the highest dunes to the beach and ran along the water’s edge until the water splashed over their Wellingtons.

Despite the secret sobbing, Maggie was more concerned about her father than her mother. It was natural that her mother should be upset. She and Alice Parry had been friends. But in a week her father seemed to have aged so that she hardly recognised him. He had always been the stern one, the one to insist on discipline when the boys misbehaved at table, to supervise their schoolwork. Now he was hardly aware of their presence. The boys sensed it and stole unusual privileges—late television, sweets before meals, rudeness to their mother—but still they failed to provoke him to any reaction.

On Friday morning, almost a week after Alice Parry’s death, Tom Kerr had arranged to meet the vicar in the church to discuss the music for Easter. Kerr was also sacristan and he felt a major responsibility for preparing the church for the festival, but throughout the conversation his mind wandered and he saw the priest looking at him strangely.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This terrible business has upset me. I can’t concentrate on anything.”

“No,” the vicar said. “ Of course.”

Let me talk to you, Kerr wanted to say. I need help. But the moment was lost and the vicar looked at his watch and then hurried away to a mothers’ union meeting in the neighbouring parish. Kerr lingered in the church.

Maggie found him there, sitting on one of the pews close to the aisle, not praying but staring at the light coming through the stained-glass window above the altar.

“Dad,” she said. “What’s the matter? Mam’s worried about you. She saw the vicar leave half an hour ago.”

She squeezed past and sat beside him on the polished pew. It was Lent and the church was bare. Maggie wished her father would stand up and walk out into the fresh air. Churches made her uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what to do,” Tom Kerr said. “ I’ve been foolish. I’m in terrible trouble and I don’t know what to do to put it right.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Perhaps I can help.”

“No,” he said sharply. “This is my business. No-one else must get involved. I’ll have to sort it out for myself.”