‘No, and it was hard on her. She never complained, but I could tell. She had the girls in the end, of course, so it was obviously worth it, but she had to manage Dean’s feelings of inadequacy on top of it all.’ Mary recrosses her legs and smooths the material of her jodhpurs. ‘Something you should be prepared to navigate.’

‘What do you mean?’ Oli asks, needing Mary to spell it out.

She pats her hair, even though every strand is perfect. ‘It’s supposed to be the woman’s issue if children don’t miraculously appear, so when the man is infertile, his ego takes a beating.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

LOUISE CARTER VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE. ONCE MICHAEL Carter’s brother was cleared, the cops had no suspects and no leads. The little girl had been taken from her bedroom, through a window widely reported to have been left open but which was eventually shown to have most likely been tampered with. In the wake of her disappearance, every aspect of the lives of Michael and April Carter was scrutinised. Why had they moved from South Africa to Australia in the first place? Why hadn’t they been back since? Why had Michael Carter taken up a board position with a children’s charity? Had April really swallowed a sleeping tablet that night? But in the end, it all amounted to nothing. The vicious swell of judgement eventually fell away, leaving the bereft family alone to deal with the unfathomable loss of their little girl.

Until now, at no point has Oli come across a suggestion that the case could be linked to the Housemate Homicide.

‘I spoke to her!’ Cooper exclaims when Oli answers the phone on Bluetooth as she turns out of the cemetery to head home. ‘April Carter. I contacted her through the Missing Person’s Facebook Group last night. She called me about an hour ago.’

Oli tries to focus on what he’s saying, even though her stomach feels hollowed out. Mary’s words haunt her.

‘Does April remember Evelyn?’ Oli manages to say.

‘No,’ Cooper says, slightly less exuberant. ‘But she said they used new babysitters just before Louise went missing. Their nanny had fallen through, and they got a flier in their letterbox advertising local sitters, so they decided to give them a go. It was all through email apparently, a Hotmail address. Before you ask, yes, I checked if they still have any of the correspondence. They don’t but they seem pretty sure.’

‘But none of them were Evelyn?’

‘April only remembers one babysitter they used, and she was Japanese. But it was April’s mother who met the other one. April and her husband were away that weekend, and her mother was staying with the kids. She had plans on the Sunday, so April arranged a sitter.’

‘Is her mother still around? Maybe she can ID Evelyn?’