It didn’t take long for news to get around the village, and even though it’s been more than ten days since the excavation, people are still speculating about it. They won’t yet know the latest information, about how and when the victims died, but while I was in the corner shop earlier, I heard old Mrs McNulty gossiping about it to one of her elderly friends – a stooped woman wearing a headscarf and pushing a checked bag on wheels. ‘I can’t imagine the Turners being responsible,’ she’d said. ‘They’d been there years. Mrs Turner was very mousy.’

‘Although,’ Mrs McNulty lowered her voice, her beady eyes flashing with excitement, ‘wasn’t there all that business a few years ago? With his nephew and the stolen goods?’

‘Oh, yes, I remember that. Well, they did leave in a bit of a hurry,’ said Headscarf Woman. ‘When was it now? Two years ago? And I heard they left the cottage in a bit of a state.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Hoarders, apparently. Although they kept the garden nice. Mrs Turner liked to plant bulbs.’

‘And now those youngsters have turned up.’

‘I hear they’ve been given the cottage for free. Inheritance apparently.’

‘It’s all right for some.’

I could feel my cheeks burning. I put the tin of baked beans back on the shelf and left the shop before they noticed me.

Now I grab my cardigan from the back of the chair. It’s cooler today, the sun struggling to poke through clouds, and I bend over Snowy’s bed to kiss him on the top of his fluffy head. ‘See you later, mister.’

I’m knocking off work early today, like I do every Thursday, to visit Gran. I feel a lurch of guilt when I think of how I ended up missing my visit to her last week because of the swarm of press outside our house. Yet today won’t be like all the other Thursdays. Today, when I sit opposite my grandmother I’ll be wondering what happened all those years ago. How did two people end up dead and buried in her garden?