Earlier, after Tom had established that nobody else was in the house, Saffy had urged him to go and look for Snowy. ‘What if whoever has broken in hurt him?’ she’d said, her eyes huge and sad in her white face. It broke Lorna’s heart. After everything Saffy has already been through tonight, this was the last thing she needed. She’s devoted to that bloody dog. Tom waited until the police arrived before leaving them. He’s been gone for over fifteen minutes now and her daughter has been chewing her lip ever since. She looks utterly drained, thinks Lorna, with dark rings around her eyes. It’s past one o’clock in the morning. Lorna wishes she could shield Saffy from all of this. She was never particularly strict, not like her own mother had been. She let Saffy watch PG-13 films when she was ten. She didn’t mind if she wanted to stay out late (not that Saffy ever did) or eat chocolate muffins for breakfast or drink wine at Christmas. If Saffy asked her a question about what was happening in the world – on third-world famine or paedophile rings – she always gave an honest answer, however brutal. She remembers her mother once saying to her, when she was younger than Saffy, already married to Euan and living more than a hundred miles away in Kent, I’ll never stop worrying about you. However old you are. And Lorna tried not to think like that when Saffy was a teenager, knowing what it was like to be stifled by a loving but fundamentally over-protective mother. But now. Now she’s more worried about her daughter than she’s ever been. She finally understands what her mother meant all those years ago.

‘If I was you,’ says one of the police officers, red-haired, good-looking, a bit like the actor Damian Lewis, ‘I’d replace that back door in your kitchen. It’s not very secure. The intruder got in by kicking the lock. It was on the floor. I’ve put it on the side in your kitchen. Someone will have to fix it. With the woods out back . . .’ He shakes his head, tucking his notebook into the pocket of his uniform.

‘I know but we hadn’t bothered because we were going to have an extension built,’ Saffy says.

‘Well, I’d at least change the locks. And consider a burglar alarm.’

Lorna’s heart sinks. They won’t be able to rest easy until that door is changed.

The red-haired officer and his sidekick finish off the tea that Lorna had prepared, then leave. Lorna feels vulnerable once they’ve gone. Like sitting ducks.

‘We’re going to have to tell DS Barnes,’ says Saffy, in a small voice. ‘We both know this wasn’t a burglary.’ She looks young, huddled in her big coat.