Fry shut her eyes against the sudden stab of pain. It was a memory that tormented her, even now. That moment she’d realized the unbelievable: Angie had left for good, walked out of their foster home in Warley and disappeared. Ever since then, Diane had thought that she’d make things right by finding Angie. But perhaps the truth was that she had never forgiven her sister for that betrayal, and never could. It was a truth she hadn’t acknowledged until now.

Sixty thousand children. Fry knew the statistics. Half of those sixty thousand wouldn’t get a single GCSE, and would leave school with no qualifications, barely able to read or write, destined for dead-end jobs, if not a permanent place on the dole queue. Fry was one of the measly two per cent who made it to university. Many were consigned to a life on the street, holed up in a filthy squat or crack house, pissing away their existence. Some care-home children felt unwanted and unvalued for the whole of their lives. Many never formed a normal relationship, because they didn’t know how. They’d never been shown.

Two thirds of those children were in care because they’d already suffered abuse or neglect. One in eight moved foster homes more than once a year. And that was a problem, when there was already a shortfall of foster carers. Too many kids, and not enough places for them to go. Fostering was a tough job. Now she’d heard that the government was considering putting vulnerable children in boarding schools and paying their fees.

Fry turned back to the photograph of the Mullen family. But it wasn’t Lindsay Mullen and the two boys she was looking at now. They were dead, and past saving. Her focus had shifted.

She held the print up to the light from the window, trying to bring out the depth of colour that suddenly seemed so important. She was studying Brian Mullen and the carefully wrapped bundle in his arms. Luanne Mullen, aged about twelve months at the time the photo was taken. It was unusual, perhaps, for a child of that age to be held by the father in a family group. She might have expected Lindsay to be the one showing off the baby, with the father proudly flanked by his two sons. But that wasn’t the way the Mullens had posed.

That detail might have been what drew Fry’s attention. It was like a tiny fly twitching its wings in the ointment, a flaw in the normal expectations. Insignificant in itself, but still . . .