‘Oh, Beth,’ I whisper, and the string of names we have called her from the time of her infancy, most of them long dormant, runs through my head: my Elizabeth, my baby-Beth, Betty-Bettina, little doll, angel-child. I try to impose these names on the girl sitting before me with her tousled hair, her berry-black eyes, the grim little stud at the corner of her nose, as if those baby names from the past might soften her, as if they might restore the girl I knew to me. But there is a new name now – an epithet – and it whispers around us, demanding recognition. Murderess.

My body reacts, even though my mind is frozen, and swiftly I cross the room and put my arms around her, pulling her into my embrace. As soon as I touch her, I fall apart. Flesh of my flesh. Fruit of my womb. I hold her against me. She is still in her chair, and I am standing, leaning over her, as if with my body I can protect her, fold her into me, keep her safe, undo what she has done. But it’s too late for that now. I feel the heat of her head against my chest – a hot living thing – and it stokes to life a boiling fury inside me. A hot living thing. I had held Eva in my arms while the life poured out of her and now she lies beneath a sheet on a stainless-steel table or slotted away in a refrigerated drawer. Fury boils up through me. ‘How could you do this?’ I ask of her, the words spoken into her hair, squeezing her to me. ‘Your own sister! How could you do this to her?’ I am screeching the words, my hands like claws digging into her flesh, loving her, hating her, a furious love careening through me, as Mark peels my hands from her, his voice breaking, saying: ‘Don’t, Abi! Please! For God’s sake …’

We look at each other then, breathless, bewildered, and I see behind his watery gaze that something has broken in him. Later, I will find out that he has already been to the morgue to see Eva. His grim duty to identify her body. To come from that and then be forced to sit alongside this daughter – this murderess – and offer his support. To be a father to the one who killed his child. Whatever resources he called upon, whatever inner depths he has plumbed, it has taken something from him. There’s an absence now. A bewilderment. Neither of us can fathom it.