I push the thought of the man from my mind as I continue down the hill, passing the Stag and Pheasant at the bottom. Instead I think again about how peaceful Beggars Nook is with its beautiful old Cotswold-stone buildings. I drive through the village square, taking in the market cross, the pretty church, the corner shop, a café and the one boutique selling trinkets, cards and slouchy expensive clothes. All walkable from the cottage and in a dip, surrounded by the woods and the thick oak trees that stretch up to the sky. It gives the impression that the village is hidden from the rest of the world. I cross the bridge and continue down the long, winding lane, pretty stone houses either side, until I get to the farm at the end. So different from built-up Croydon. So safe. Or so I’d thought. Now I’m not so sure.

The murders must have happened before Gran bought the cottage back in the 1970s. I know she went on to rent it out for decades after she moved to Bristol – we found out this detail only recently after she went into a care home. Mum and I had been a little surprised. As far as we’d been aware Gran had only ever owned one property: her red-brick terrace in the Bishopston area of Bristol where Mum grew up and where I spent every summer. Gran, who, before the dementia took over, loved to bake and tend her plants, was calm and practical, never raising her voice. Not like Mum who has a short fuse and no filter, although she’s mellowed a bit now. Those summers with Gran, in her Bristol house with the large garden and adjoining land at the end, were my sanctuary, a break from my mum and the drama that always seemed to surround her.

I’d loved Gran’s fat black Labrador with the grey whiskers, Bruce (Mum never wanted us to get a pet. Too smelly, she said but Gran’s house never smelt), and the old-fashioned, comfy sofas with white cotton slips on the arms that Gran would wash and starch every week. The butterscotch sweets she had in a tin at the top of the cupboard and the garden with the wired fence that separated it from her neighbours. The warm, musty smell of the greenhouse and the tomato plants inside. It was comforting to see Gran in the greenhouse tending those plants, talking to them softly to encourage them to grow. I love my mum dearly, but she was – and still is – so high energy, so effusive and demonstrative, with her colourful clothes and over-the-top personality, that she sometimes makes me feel exhausted. I’ve always felt more of an affinity with Gran, both of us loving nature and the outdoors, slightly reclusive, preferring our own company to crowds of people.