Karen turned and walked back to the car. There was somewhere else she had to go on this street. Someone she had to see, before she finished her journey.

She halted at the gate, pleased to see the spring flowers in the neat front garden. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad, after all. Although, too frightened that she might change her mind and chicken out, she hadn’t called ahead. Gathering her courage, she pushed open the gate, walked up the path to the front door and rang the bell.

It took a moment or two before she heard footsteps, during which she veered between turning and running away and thinking her heart had stopped.

Then the door opened and the face looking out at her now still held traces of its teenage self. Karen also realized that this was what Mary might have looked like if only she had lived. The face grew puzzled, then the light of recognition flashed in her eyes.

‘Karen Marshall, it’s you, isn’t it?’

Karen nodded and was immediately swept inside.

60

The meeting room was gradually filling up. By the reaction of the crowd it looked like they anticipated something big was about to happen. Rhona wondered if it had anything to do with McNab’s mood when she’d spoken to him earlier.

It began to look even more that way when Bill, after a brief introduction, called on DS McNab to come to the front. As McNab passed Rhona, he acknowledged her with a brief nod, but for once she couldn’t read his demeanour. Was he about to tell them something good or something really bad?

McNab began by explaining how Karen had been located in Stirling, without placing too much emphasis on the role McCreadie had played in it. Despite this, you could tell by the audience’s reaction that they were keen to give the former DI credit for what he’d done.

McNab now played the interview he’d conducted with Karen at McCreadie’s home. Rhona thought listening to Karen’s wavering and troubled voice, her starts and stops, her pain, both physical and mental, was even more poignant among others than it had been alone.

The story of the dress, and the reason why Mary felt she couldn’t be confirmed, had the impact Rhona suspected it would. Most people in the room had no real idea of what life had been like in 1975 for children within the Church, and in wider society, although McCreadie, give him his due, had tried to enlighten the team to those facts in his address at the previous meeting.

Rhona’s eyes were drawn back to the screen as McNab brought up the pages of the diary. Many of the team would have already read these, but by the reaction in the room some obviously hadn’t.

McNab continued, ‘I probably don’t need to tell you this, but there are discrepancies in both Karen’s answers to my questions and what’s written in the diary. And for me, at least, there’s a strong sense that Karen may yet know more than she has revealed or remembered.’