‘Should we disturb them on a Sunday?’ asks Saffy from the sofa, wrapped in her velour dressing gown the colour of aubergines, looking a little peaky. Tom is still in bed. They were up late last night, talking for hours after Theo and Jen had left. Lorna was wide awake at 7 a.m. and has already been on the phone to her boss back in Spain to tell him she’ll need more time off. He was surprisingly understanding.

‘Absolutely. This is important,’ she replies firmly.

Although it’s still early, the sun is already streaming through the windows and it cheers Lorna up. She needs it after last night’s revelations. The only good thing to come out of it is that she might have a half-brother. But the rest – Victor Carmichael being her dad, and the despicable things he might have done. What kind of man would send a thug like Glen Davies to frighten her? His own daughter? The murdering kind, she thinks. Could he have had something to do with the bodies in the garden? Is he now panicking because the past is catching up with him and worried he’ll be found out all these years later? What ‘evidence’ does her mother have against him?

And then there’s Saffy. She glances at her daughter, who is staring into the middle distance, biting at her thumbnail. All the resentment Saffy has been harbouring, things Lorna wasn’t even aware of. Has she been a bad mother? Her daughter’s words still feel like a wound to her heart. She doesn’t know how to make any of it better.

Lorna picks up her mobile from the coffee table. ‘Would you mind putting the kettle on, honey? And I’ll phone DS Barnes.’ She’s already had two cups of coffee this morning and feels jittery. Saffy comes to reluctantly, gets off the sofa and heads into the kitchen. She can hear her clattering about opening cupboards and plonking mugs onto the worktop.

DS Barnes answers straight away. She launches into an account of last night’s events, talking so fast he has to ask her to repeat herself.

‘Wow, good work,’ he says, when she’s finished. ‘We’ll send someone to talk to Victor Carmichael today.’

‘He lives in Yorkshire . . .’

‘That’s not a problem. And now we know who Glen Davies works for it shouldn’t be hard to find him either,’ he says. Lorna feels a wave of relief. She’s been on constant alert since he grabbed her off the street. She hopes they can lock him up. ‘As you can guess,’ he adds, ‘the card he gave you wasn’t legitimate. The number is probably a burner phone and it rang out when one of my officers called. We can organize a DNA test. When is Theo returning home?’