She sat at the front, and looked at the two coffins. They were closed – there was not much left of Seb and Leo – and she was glad. She preferred to remember them as they were. She had described them to James and her parents, although they would never know what their other two grandsons looked like. There were no photos. That was one of the many things that Colin Best had taken from them and from her.

Her dad sat on her left, his hand on her arm. He was exactly as she remembered him. Warm, thoughtful, loving, and still telling his terrible dad jokes. There was a wariness to him that was new – he didn’t let her go anywhere alone, which she was going to have to talk to him about – but other than that he was the dad she remembered.

Mum had been ill, it turned out, and you could see it in the lines on her face. According to the doctors she was fine now, but it had left its mark.

And James. Her little brother, James. He was over his addiction, although she still saw the hunger in his eyes from time to time.

Max was – incredibly – fine. At first he had asked about the room and the man all the time, but that had gradually slowed until he didn’t mention it at all. He still saw a child psychiatrist; she told Maggie that, although he had some developmental delays, they would resolve themselves on their own and he would grow up a normal, well-adjusted child. Maggie marvelled on a daily basis at how easily he had adapted. He went to a pre-school, had a group of friends, watched television, and sat, for hours on end, watching his grandad build a huge, electric train set for him.

And her? She saw a psychiatrist too. She had nightmares; she didn’t like sleeping with the door open; she struggled to trust people, especially men. The weirdest part had been when she had, for a few days, started to miss the room. Everything felt like a threat; she didn’t dare take her eyes off Max. At least the room was safe.

Except it wasn’t. It was slowly destroying her, and the man would have killed Max. He was going to do it that day. She had the scars on her fingers to prove it.

And the feeling of missing it didn’t last. Now she was glad, every day, to wake up and look out of a window and see a tree or the rain on the glass or a bird in the sky. She’d taken Max to see some of the things she’d described to him: the sea, the forest, the mountains. He’d especially loved the animals at Chester Zoo.