‘She got on well with her stepfather?’

Fleur’s eyes reflected a sudden rush of anger. Don’t even go there. ‘He was David’s best friend. He was the twins’ godfather, so he knew the twins even before my husband was killed. Fergus and Nikki adored each other. Fergus was closer than I am to my daughter.’

‘Why is that, Mrs Campbell?’

‘Nikki blamed me for Saffie’s death.’

‘Because you slept that afternoon?’

‘Yes.’

‘She made a judgement at five years old?’

‘No, not at five years old, Inspector. Not straight away. The blame and sorrow grew slowly over the years. She was totally adrift without her twin. Our difficulties with her began slowly, thirteen months later, after Fergus and I got married.’

‘But if she got on well with your husband, wouldn’t she have been happy?’

Fleur met his eyes. ‘I can’t actually see how my private life is relevant to this inquiry, Inspector.’

Blythe leant forward. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not being prurient. You’d be surprised how building up a picture of people involved in a case is incredibly relevant sometimes.’

‘Except that Nikki was five years old and Fergus was in Singapore at the time of Saffie’s disappearance, so I can’t follow your line of reasoning.’

The inspector sighed. ‘I guess I was asking if, although she liked her stepfather and knew him well, your daughter resented you actually marrying him and usurping her own dead father.’

Fleur felt a growing respect for this man, he was like a terrier. ‘Yes, you’re right, Inspector, she did resent me remarrying. It took Fergus years and endless patience for her to accept his love. When she did, they never looked back.’

‘And you, Mrs Campbell? Did she accept your love too?’ He watched her small brown hands that were never still.

‘No, she has never been able to forgive me. The twins lost their beloved father, and then you see, in her eyes, I let her sister, her twin, the other half of her, die by my neglect.’

This was too much for Blythe. ‘But she is an adult woman now, Mrs Campbell. Someone came along and snatched your daughter while you slept. You did not kill her…’

‘Nikki knows that. So do I. Fergus used to tell me often enough. This trip was…full of hope. I was visiting her in New Zealand for the first time, hoping her happiness with Jack and her pregnancy would help us to start again…to become closer…’

Fleur stopped, then said softly, ‘When I first saw her, so worried about me, so concerned, I thought for a while it was all going to be like I had imagined for so long. I felt so close to her on that awful morning in the pathology place…But life isn’t that simple, is it?’

‘No, it’s not,’ Blythe said. ‘We all become entrenched in our assumptions. Tragedy sometimes brings people closer, for a while. But it is the everyday living and loving that’s so difficult to keep up, don’t you think?’ There was something wistful in his voice that surprised Fleur.