From outside on the street Clara heard the jingling crash of crates of beers being delivered to the bar on the corner. They sat and listened to it, a sound she associated with summer, with sitting outside pubs on sunlit pavements with Luke, with being happy.

‘Clara? Are you OK? I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.’

She looked at his anxious face and suddenly felt so tired she could barely stand. She sank back on to the sofa. ‘Just go, Mac,’ she said quietly. ‘Just go the fuck home now, will you?’

7

Cambridgeshire, 1988

There was a local woman, a childminder named Kathy Philips, who occasionally took care of Hannah for me when I needed a break. She was, in hindsight, a bit slack; her home was haphazard, she had four children of her own, plus at least one other mindee whenever I dropped Hannah off. But she was a kind, no-nonsense sort, and, most importantly, she was willing – by then Hannah’s reputation had spread throughout our village; there weren’t a lot of people willing to look after her. I was desperate, I’ll admit.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hannah did what she did. She had told me that morning she didn’t want to go: ‘They’re stupid and boring and their house smells of wee,’ was I think how she put it. So this, I expect, was her way of punishing me.

I’ll never forget the fury in Kathy’s voice when she called. ‘Come and pick your daughter up right now,’ she spat, before slamming the phone back down. As I drove over there I mentally ran through the possibilities. Attacked one of the other kids? Stolen something? But no, it was far worse than either of those things. Kathy was waiting for me at her door when I pulled up and the expression on her face made my blood run cold. ‘She set fire to my son’s bedroom,’ she told me through gritted teeth.

There was no coming back from that. There was no sweeping that under the carpet – no pretending she’d grow out of it, that it was merely some dreadful phase. Hannah had taken some matches from Kathy’s handbag, sneaked upstairs and made a pile of Callum’s books, then set fire to them. Kathy, luckily, had smelt the smoke before it had spread too far – but not before she’d burned a large brown hole in the carpet. I hate to think what would have happened if it had been allowed to take hold.

‘Callum was being annoying,’ Hannah shrugged, when I asked her why she’d done it. By this time she was seven years old.