‘Things were going well for a bit. The Prof came to speak to us as a group, and she listened, but said nothing. Karen could do that, you know, retreat into herself, but she was coming back, until . . .’ She paused, looking round at their intent faces. ‘Until the bloody crow arrived. The crow and the dead cat.’

She then proceeded to explain about the invasion of the crow via the chimney, followed by a vision of Karen’s dead cat passing the window. ‘She said she was having nightmares. That it was about her pal Mary who had disappeared all those years ago. She thought she was going doolally. I told her we all were. That’s why we came to the cafe.’

Marge halted a moment to see if they would say anything. When they didn’t, she continued.

‘Then she heard on the bloody radio about the body you lot found on the moor. She knew right away it was Mary, so that made matters worse.’

‘And the diary?’ Janice prompted.

‘She still had the fucking diary she’d kept around the time her pal disappeared. Imagine keeping it all those years. Apparently Jack had told her to get rid of it. To forget the past. But it haunted her because she couldn’t remember that day. Not properly. She’d gone into a dwam apparently, stopped speaking altogether when it happened.’

‘Go on,’ McNab urged.

‘Then stuff started coming back. The day she brought the diary in for me to look after because she wanted it out of the house. We were drawing a map of the street. She told me there was a wood where they’d built their den. When I started drawing it, she suddenly freaked out.’ Marge paused to look directly at them. ‘She said Mary was upset. She wondered if God would forgive her.’

‘Forgive her for what?’ Janice said in surprise.

‘Some bastard had been interfering with Mary, and she thought because of that she couldn’t get confirmed.’

‘Jesus,’ McNab mouthed under his breath.

‘That’s when Karen made off. I thought she’d just gone to the bathroom, but when I went looking for her, she was out at the car and she’d taken back the diary.’ She paused again. ‘That’s the last I saw of her.’

The silence that followed was heavy with thought. For McNab the possible admission by Mary that she’d been abused was the most significant part of the whole speech. McLaughlin had suggested Mary had been pregnant when she’d disappeared. The truth of that, considering the time lapse and the state of the remains, couldn’t be determined. But this memory of Karen’s suggested someone had been preying on Mary before she’d disappeared.

‘The woods,’ Marge said. ‘Something happened in those bloody woods. Something Karen’s buried so deep, she can’t bear to have it resurface.’ She looked round at the faces. ‘What me and the Prof saw at the cottage – did Karen hurt herself, or has some bastard got at Karen to stop her telling you the truth?’