‘What the hell was Rose mixed up in?’ Tom stops pacing, his arms folded, fixing Lorna with a furious gaze, like it’s her fault. She’s the parent here: she needs to take charge.

‘Let’s all go to bed,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll come with you to the care home tomorrow, honey. See what we can find out.’

‘Mum . . .’

Lorna holds up her hand, looking from Saffy’s anxious face to Tom’s angry one. ‘You both need to get some rest,’ she says, in her most authoritarian voice. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ She limps out of the room and climbs the stairs, her knee aching with the movement. Fury builds inside her. How dare this man threaten her family. Tomorrow, she thinks, she’ll buy some panic alarms and some pepper spray. If that man comes anywhere near her daughter again she’ll kill him.

28

Rose

February 1980

THE DAY AFTER I RAN INTO JOEL IN THE VILLAGE SQUARE the snow came.

You woke me up, scrambling into my room and jumping on my bed, an angel in your long white nightie. ‘Snow! Snow!’ you cried, shaking me awake and dragging me to the window, the wooden floorboards cold underfoot. You looked so cute, your big brown eyes wide with delight and your hair in dark tendrils around your shoulders. Thick dense flakes were falling fast and settling onto the layer already on the ground. The sky was a perfect pearly white and gave the impression the world was wrapped in a quilt.

‘No playschool today! I’m not going out in this,’ I said, climbing back into bed and snuggling down.

You clapped your hands excitedly. ‘Snowman!’

‘Yes, snowman. But later.’

Daphne appeared at the bedroom door then, dressed in many layers with thick socks pulled up over pyjama bottoms, which ballooned over the top giving the impression she was wearing old-fashioned breeches. Her long fair hair was a messy halo around her face. ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ she said, blowing theatrically onto her hands.

‘Snow! Snow!’ you sang, grabbing her hands, pulling her around, like you were playing a game of ring-a-roses. Daphne threw her head back and laughed and, as I watched the two of you, I felt my heart burst with happiness. The three of us, in that little cottage, cosy and safe, cocooned from the world.

We didn’t need anybody else.

We lit the fire in the front room and Daphne made hot chocolate, heating milk on the stove, while I rummaged in cupboards making sure we had enough food for the next few days, just in case we couldn’t get to the shops. I bought most of my food in the grocery store but once a month I was forced to drive to the big Safeway on the roundabout, two miles or so out of the village. Luckily I’d only gone the week before.