Passing round the side of the house, he happened to glance through the kitchen window. What he caught sight of within made him stop dead, though at first he couldn’t process what he was seeing. They’re decorating, he remembered thinking (this part was so absurd he never shared it with anyone). But why choose red?

Then he felt his whole body go cold. The sun was nowhere to be seen, but it was a bright day beneath a white sky and reflections against the window broke up his view. However, Greg could see enough to realize that the kitchen was awash with blood. For a few moments, he didn’t move at all. Then he made himself put his face closer to the window, and cupped his hands round his eyes to block out the reflections. A red room. Blood all over the floor, glossy and bright around the bodies where it must still be wet; darker, dryer-looking near the corners of the room. Blood sprinkled and spattered in bright patterns across the far wall in a way that reminded Greg of his children’s efforts at abstract art.

In the middle of this explosion of red, Katrina was on the floor on her back, legs bent, one arm above her head as though she’d collapsed in a faint. Greg knew it was Katrina by that purple jumper she often wore, dense and heavy now with blood, and by the red hair which fanned out around her like she was floating underwater. It took him a few moments to absorb the fact that half of her head was missing, replaced with empty space and dark pulp and glistening red. “Obscene” was the word that came to Greg afterwards when he thought about this moment, seeing a human body as it wasn’t meant to be seen, even by a doctor, as a carcass, a lump of bloodied meat.

But it was Beth whom he would never afterwards be able to get out of his mind, even though he barely saw her, barely allowed himself to see her. He had caught sight of her immediately, lying not too far from her mother, closer to the kitchen door, but he didn’t let his eyes do anything more than drift quickly over her and away again. He had time to observe that her eyes were open. Her chest open too, a dark red sinkhole in her small torso. What kind of man turns a shotgun on a baby?

Greg knew that if he entered it, the room would have that heavy smell of raw meat, of blood, of the abattoir.

All the same, he forced himself to try the back door, his hands shaking so much they kept slipping off the handle. It was locked and he could have wept with relief. The only thing he had grasped in his shock was that whatever else was inside that house, he couldn’t bear to see it.