He put the pot down on the table and took her hand. ‘Tell me what happened, Nora. It’ll be all right, I’ll make sure of that, but you’ve got to trust me. I need to know everything, or I can’t help you.’

She touched his face, wondering why it had taken something so dreadful to bring them together again after the strain of recent months, why one grief could only be repaired by another. ‘You can’t help me, Tom – no one can. Not after what I’ve done, but I love you for trying.’

There were tears in his eyes now, and she was ashamed of what she had done to him and their life together. ‘Don’t give up, Nora,’ he begged. ‘Promise me you’ll do as I say. I’m not losing you. I can’t. We just have to make sure they can’t prove anything.’ He didn’t understand, because his faith had never been as strong as hers, but she would be punished, whether 247or not the police discovered the truth. ‘Promise me,’ he urged again, and she nodded.

‘All right. I’ll do whatever you want me to.’

‘Start by telling me what happened.’

She forced herself to relive the previous morning, stopping only to answer his queries, grateful that he offered no judgement on anything she said. ‘How did you know?’ she asked when he was satisfied. ‘How could you possibly know what needed doing?’

‘I saw you go in while I was working down in the harbour,’ he said, ‘and I watched for you to come out, because I’d been so worried about you, what with not hearing anything from Jenna and how upset you’d been. When you left, you went home, not up to the castle like I thought you would, and I wondered if something was wrong.’

‘So you checked on Emily?’

‘Not exactly. I went to ask her advice. Anything I did, anything I said just seemed to make things worse between us recently, and she was always so wise. I thought if anybody could help us come to terms with Jenna, she could.’

And he was right, Nora thought; in the most tragic of ways, Emily had helped. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her, Tom. Really I didn’t. I’d do anything to change what I’ve done – anything.’

‘Of course you didn’t mean to do it, and it’s my fault as much as yours. I should have talked to you instead of bottling everything up. That way, you might not have felt so alone. But it’s done now, love, and there’s no undoing it. We just have to stay calm and decide what to do. Which of the nativity figures was it? I’ll go up and get it tonight, when everyone’s gone to bed, just in case you didn’t clean it properly. We’ll need to get your keys back from Penrose.’ 248

Nora could have wept with shame to think of it there, in the church – a thing of evil now, hiding so innocently in the crib. ‘You can’t, Tom. Even if you had my keys, the policeman’s said no one’s to go in there. They’re probably watching it for all I know.’