When the horror of the dream began to diminish I began to distrust it as I often had before, until the next time. I no longer felt that Saffie was near me and I missed her as if somehow she might guide me. I was afraid of a little chink of memory that was beginning to open. I knew I could not control my mind and what it might disclose. At breakfast, Fleur had suddenly broken down. The thought of someone we knew killing Saffie, someone Dad knew, seemed unbearable, too terrible to contemplate. I made her go back to bed and stayed with her until she fell asleep. She managed to sleep for two hours and was having a shower when the policemen came.

‘My mother’s very upset today; she’s had a bad night,’ I said, looking at Mohktar.

‘Yes,’ he said, as if he somehow knew. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘We won’t keep you long,’ Inspector Blythe said. ‘I just want to go over that afternoon one more time.’

‘What is the point?’ I asked wearily.

Fleur came into the room. ‘It’s quite all right, Inspector. Good morning.’ She smiled at both men. ‘Let me get you both a cold drink before we begin.’

She seemed to be her old self but I noticed her hands shook and so did the two policemen.

Inspector Blythe laid out the photographs and his witness statements on the table with a plan of the government rest houses showing where each family had stayed and we sat down with our drinks. I glanced at Mohktar he seemed very quiet this morning and I missed his reassuring smile.

Blythe said gently to Mum, ‘Will you humour me one last time, Mrs Campbell?’

He took her back over the time Beatrice Addison left us to go back to her own house. They had been staying in the one nearest to us, but slightly higher up the cliff. The Durys were the other side of them on the same level and the teachers were lower down near to the beach, like us, but further along.

‘You went to your room with the twins at about two thirty. When you fell asleep, both twins were beside you?’

‘Yes.’

He turned to me. ‘Can you remember if your mother fell asleep before you?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think so.’

‘Did you and Saffie go to sleep straight away?’

‘I did, I don’t think Saffie did, or only for a while.’

‘She woke you up?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was still afternoon, not evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can you be sure, if the shutters were closed? If you didn’t get out of bed?’

I stared at him. ‘The room was still hot. I was still tired and did not want to be woken.’

‘OK. So tell me what you can remember. Saffie got out of bed and asked you to go outside to play with her?’

‘She…she leant over mum and shook me awake…I was cross because she woke me and I turned over. I heard her get out of bed. She went to the window and opened a shutter because it was dark. I knew she was looking for her dress.’