Poppy was barely eight, but she could confidently dissect words into their syllables and come up with rhymes in order to offer ‘sounds like’ clues. She threw the whole of her little body into the miming, especially if it required flamboyant emotion or imitating animals. But then some detail would crack her up and she’d dissolve into giggles. Cameron would pretend she was doing it on purpose as a clue and he’d call out guesses—‘laugh’, ‘giggle’, ‘wee your pants’—which would send his sister into more flurries of laughter. If Stacey signalled to him to cool it, Cameron would nod earnestly and keep quiet until Poppy had controlled herself enough to complete the clue.

When it was Cameron’s turn to perform, he would have his serious concentrating face on, sucking in his bottom lip a little, tiny creases in his forehead, determined to be precise and effective with his actions. He was especially satisfied if Poppy guessed his signals.

Now, Paula could still picture the exact spot in front of the fireplace where the kids used to stand when they played charades, and she could imagine the straw hat with the folded bits of paper sitting on the coffee table. That was why she wanted to move back into her house as soon as it was feasible. There were memories embedded in so many places in that house—images of her husband, and now Stacey, Cameron and Poppy too. She needed to be there.

For two weeks, Paula stayed at Anita’s Newtown apartment, going in to work most days, taking off the occasional morning to do police interviews, meet funeral directors and handle the other administrative tasks that follow the killing of a close friend and her children. She preferred to keep occupied, seeing patients, driving to and from the practice, even if it meant she had to field the awkward, soggy but well-meaning questions from her fellow doctors. All the doctors except Li-Kim, who knew Paula too well to prod at her by constantly asking, ‘How are you?’

Li-Kim was forty-two, smart, a diligent GP, dryly funny, discreet, loyal. She was forever trying a new weight-loss method. ‘Paula, let’s be realistic: I’m short and dumpy, with a sweet tooth. I’m born to be round. Why should patients pay attention to advice from a fat doctor?’

They’d joined the practice in the same month, immediately clocking each other as potential friends. Then Remy met Li-Kim at a medical conference dinner and the two of them hit it off straight away. Two years later, when Li-Kim and her wife Connie had their first daughter, they asked Remy to be the godfather.

Since the murders, Li-Kim had been shepherding Paula’s work schedule with gentle care and unobtrusively covering any necessary absences.

When Paula decided it was time to move back into her own house, Anita tried to talk her out of it.