The Coyne family lived behind the walls of a large house in Cheshire, in the upmarket hinterland of Liverpool, and the neighbours, who included a top female TV star and three producers, were always polite to the Coynes even though their overtures of friendship were never reciprocated. The Coynes never accepted invitations to dine or attend parties. They were an anomaly, and eventually the neighbours left them in their large property and just waved now and again if they saw them on the drive. Bethany’s mother visited on a daily basis and Bethany needed no one else. Just Jack, her mother Violet, and her children, four sons and two daughters.

The house had twenty rooms, an outdoor heated pool and a large thirty-by-thirty-foot pond in which Jack kept his Koi carp. The grounds, which sprawled for nearly an acre, held numerous animals belonging to the children, including a pot-bellied pig and three Shetland ponies.

Bethany cooked and cleaned the house by herself, grew her own herbs outside the back door, and had never learnt to drive or use a video. She dressed well, kept herself neat, and never wore make-up. Jack looked on her as his dark Madonna. Now she was pregnant once more and enjoying the condition as always.

It was to this strange household that Alan and Donna came on the Sunday afternoon, on their way back to London from Glasgow. The atmosphere in the car was uncomfortable.

After Donna had apologised, they had left the Amber House Restaurant without ordering; Alan had driven them straight back to their hotel, leaving her at her door. Donna had gone into her room, and cracking open a bottle of Jameson’s, had sat on her bed and thought long and hard about the events of the last few days. It was a different woman who came down to breakfast the next day, and they both knew that.

Alan pressed the intercom on the wall by the double gates. As they opened electronically, Donna drew in a deep breath on seeing the house that was hidden behind them gradually revealed. It was a long, low Scandinavian-style building, with floor-to-ceiling windows and flat roofs. It seemed out of place in Liverpool, and in the weak sunshine looked as though it should have been covered in snow on some mountainside in Europe.

‘What a house!’