He knew exactly what she meant. They had been living in Anna’s father’s house since the story broke, to avoid negative attention, but they hadn’t wanted to upset Josie’s routines, so she still attended the same school. Most of the kids there didn’t really have a clue what was going on, but they knew Josie’s family was being talked about and she had suffered some bullying. They had had to talk to her about why, but it didn’t really penetrate deep and her young age meant she had no idea that her mother’s past actions would cast a shadow over the rest of her life.

A constant source of terrible tension for Anna, but Nick focussed only on the present. As long as Josie continued to laugh and enjoy childhood, they could deal with the future as it unfolded. Rightly so, most of the media and public attention was on Marc Eastman and his wife and her clan, and the story would erode to nothing over the years, leaving just the storms inside the heads of a select few. A big starting point of that erosion had been the words of Jon Adams’s father in the courtroom at Anna’s sentencing hearing as he read from a prepared statement.

‘I’m sorry…’ Anna began, reading aloud from her own prepared ‘statement’. As he’d promised, Nick backed away so Anna could do this part alone. He watched her, but he imagined Josie in her place, adult and knowing everything, and compelled to pay a lifelong debt passed from mother to daughter like a hereditary disease. And when it was done, they clasped hands and headed out of the cemetery, and into stage two of this long, hard day, where Anna would plant a second rose. One of four.

But the remaining two weren’t for the dead.

‘In the years since our beloved son was snatched away, I did the rainbow of emotions. Initially I occupied one end, praying that I could get my hands on the person who killed Jon and Joanne. I spent long nights imagining tortures, I don’t mind admitting that to the court. But the passage of days, many, many days, brought a growing calm. I accepted Jon was gone, and then I started to move on. By the time I heard that the police had made arrests, I bore no ill will, just a desire for justice and closure. After the upcoming trials of those involved, primarily the former Secretary of State for Education, Marc Eastman, for murder, and his wife Iliana, for obstruction of justice, this story can close. Of course, those defendants have separate trials for kidnapping.