She smiled, radiating self-assurance. ‘I can maintain equilibrium most of the time, and when I can’t I pour my emotions into my art.’ Her gaze became piercing. ‘At my core, though, I’m still a seething ball of white-hot rage …’

While Murphy leant back in his chair, Jake wanted to sit forward, putting himself directly in the path of her gaze.

‘…so I throw it on to the canvas rather than directing it at myself or anyone else.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But look, you don’t have to dance around the topic. You can ask me straight out—I’ll do whatever I can to help them.’

‘Whatever you can do for who?’ Murphy asked.

Jake wasn’t sure what she was referring to either. ‘Lilith, as I said yesterday we’re here because Ava O’Brien was killed in suspicious circumstances.’

‘I’m not going to pretend to be sorry,’ she said with grim satisfaction. ‘But that’s not the main reason you’re here, is it?’

Jake took in her expectant, almost hopeful countenance. ‘Why do you think we’re here?’

‘Because you found my baby?’

‘You had a baby?’ Murphy said almost incredulously.

‘After the second time I woke up—after the painful thing she did to me—I found out I was pregnant.’

Jake’s mind was racing.

‘As soon as I gave birth she took them away.’ Her voice became gravelly, her face contorted with loss. ‘Aren’t you here because you found them? Did I have a girl or a boy? Do they want to meet me?’

Jake looked at his hands. He had no answers for her.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Melbourne, Victoria

Tuesday, 3.06 p.m.

‘I’m sorry, we didn’t know that you’d had a child,’ Jake said, aware that his words were almost physically painful to Lilith as they dropped from his mouth.

‘They’d be about eleven now.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jake repeated. ‘If we find any information about your child in the course of our investigation, I’ll let you know straight away …’ he blurted helplessly.

Given the unusual mutilation of at least two of the girls in the home, Jake reminded himself he couldn’t make any assumptions about what else may have happened to Lilith.

‘What can you tell us about the pregnancy?’

Lilith lifted her chin. ‘A few weeks after the second attack I started getting sick, couldn’t keep any food down. I became so weak I stopped being able to walk very far. I lost weight, but then my stomach started to poke out. I thought I was dying. I had no idea what was going on, but Ms O’Brien did.’

‘Did she say anything to you directly regarding the pregnancy?’

‘She kept me locked in my room and only let me out to go to the toilet. She told me I was going to hell for being a strumpet.’