‘And here I am wailing to you like a baby. Look, you take care, and if anything happens here, I’ll call you immediately.’

Will promised to do the same. They wished each other well and rang off.

Hearing the loud voices coming from the kitchen, Will decided to give it a wide berth and find himself something constructive to do. He went slowly upstairs and stopped outside Kate’s studio.

He had to get a look at her latest work. She would have taken the key, of course, but just in case, he tried the door. To his amazement, it swung open. He stepped inside, feeling like a voyeur. He had been made to feel so unwelcome there of late that he kept looking over his shoulder in case he was being observed.

On her workbench lay copies of the finished illustrations for the Fairy Dreams book, the ones the courier had collected. He leafed through them. They were good, but that eerie and slightly frightening atmosphere increased as he progressed through the series. He wondered what Angela would make of them. Still, at least Kate had managed to complete them. He wondered if he should tell the agent of Kate’s illness but thought better of it. She would be furious at his interfering. Maybe after Lawrence Hassel had finished treating her, she’d be able to deal with Hubert herself.

His gaze wandered around the tiny room. Only the illustrations had been left tidy. Unusually for Kate, the place was a mess. There were artists’ materials everywhere, plus sketches, half-finished plans and pictures, notes and screwed-up pieces of paper.

He turned to the stack of paintings that he had photographed but left them alone. Not those nightmarish illustrations, not today, knowing that his dear little Sophie could be lying out on the fen, like the subject of one of her deranged aunt’s creations.

Again, he was struck by the horrible coincidences, the unexplained connections between all the events at Whisper Fen. He recalled that last picture, and Sophie’s dream, followed by her disappearance. He had to see it again.

He pulled it out and stared at it. A yellow post-it note was stuck to the top right-hand corner.

I knew you wouldn’t be able to stay out of my room, Will, so I didn’t bother to lock it. And you have seen this before, haven’t you? On one of your earlier visits? Ironic, don’t you think? Or do you still believe that children are welcome here?

He stared at the frightened child. Perhaps he hadn’t looked at it properly before, but the resemblance was clear enough now. Not to Sophie exactly, but to Eva, her mother. The look of fear had distorted the features, but the more he looked the more it became obvious. Kate had modelled that child on his dead sister.