‘But Rosie is sick.’ Hugh hated that he was going along with the name. ‘I have to get her to somewhere safe, and then I’ll come back for you and your mummy.’

The moments that followed happened so fast. Hugh barely had time to think, let alone react. Faith grabbed the knife from the worktop and ran at him, plunging the blade into his side. ‘You can’t take Rosie, Daddy,’ she cried as the knife clattered to the tiled floor. ‘You just can’t.’

Within seconds, Verity had grabbed a screaming Faith, and the girl’s arms flapped and smacked, as she tried to get free from Verity’s grip.

‘You can’t tell anyone, Hugh,’ Verity cried. ‘They’ll take her away from me. I can’t lose her. I can’t lose her.’

Hugh stumbled through the kitchen door, and across the hall, holding his side, blood dripping onto the parquet flooring. He looked over his shoulder, expecting Verity to follow, but she didn’t.

The keys to her car were in a dish by the front door. He grabbed them, and his coat, and lumbered into the warm summer’s day.

Outside, with shaking hands, he strapped his daughter into the back seat, laid the cuddly tiger in her arms, and wrapped her in a grey beach towel he found on the seat. ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ he said to her, barely believing his words.

With wide-open eyes, the child stared up at the house, seeming to take it in – filing it in her memory.

Hugh limped round to the driver’s side, wincing in pain as he folded himself inside. He hadn’t driven much since he lived in Bristol, and crunched the gears several times before pulling away at speed.

He drove fast along the causeway, tyres churning sand, desperate to get away, blood oozing from his side, the pain intolerable. But he had to keep on going. He had to.

He glanced in the rear-view mirror, adjusted it slightly to see his daughter on the back seat. Her eyes were still wide open as she looked about her. He moved his gaze to the reflection of Flynn House framed, captured, a tiny version of hell, before pressing his foot down on the throttle, and pulling off the causeway onto the country road, and away. He had no idea where he would go, but knew he would never be back – not even for his sister, not even for the child he once thought was his own.

Chapter 42

Halloween Weekend 2019

Alice

‘Your lips are so pink, Rosie. Rosie-pink.’ Faith giggles. Fake. Childlike. ‘Christine must have put too much colouring into the icing.’ A pause. ‘She didn’t know what else I put into the mixture, of course.’

Alice looks down at the cake; the yellow crumbs sprinkled across the plastic plate, and at the puppets, each with their own pristine, uneaten fairy cake in front of them.