He left the room feeling sick. Surely there was more to this than just grief over a lost baby. Emma had been his child too, and he had coped. So what had happened to Kate?

He shut the door and stood on the landing. The answer was all around him. Holland House had happened. Its miserable history had seeped into his lovely wife’s fragile mind and taken it over. He descended the stairs, step by step. As soon as Sophie was found — alive, or . . . he couldn’t bring himself to contemplate the alternative — he would ring the estate agents. He refused to see the rest of his life out in this dreary place. Kate could argue all she liked but they were leaving, and if she thought he would leave her alone in Holland House, she could think again. He’d burn it down before that happened.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Liz and Matt’s concern over Kate Stonebridge had diminished somewhat, but as the hours passed, their fear for the missing girl mounted.

‘Will is in a state of panic,’ observed Liz, washing up yet another trayful of dirty mugs. ‘If only there was something we could do or say to help the poor guy.’

Matt grunted. ‘He’s seen too much in the past, like we have. All the awful situations he had to confront in the force are probably running through his mind.’

‘Add to that his worry over Kate, and the macabre history of the children of Holland House. The way she spoke so casually about there being more deaths. It had me wondering if she could be right.’

‘I’d rather stick to the facts right now, wouldn’t you?’ Matt said. ‘And fact number one is that that little girl has been missing for far too long and, frankly, I’m starting to panic too.’

‘At least Kate’s not here to see it all. Sam reckons that, if she is amenable, she’ll probably be staying for about a week, or ten days.’ Liz refilled the kettle.

‘Don’t you think it’s odd that she didn’t put up a fight?’ asked Matt. ‘I thought she’d protest like hell. Will said she simply agreed.’

‘I think perhaps she was upset by having the police and a horde of strangers arrive on Whisper Fen,’ Liz said. ‘It was her special private place, and the search for Sophie would have been a colossal intrusion into her privacy. Maybe she needed to escape for a while. She obviously didn’t think she needed treatment, so she might have thought she was using the situation for her own ends.’