‘About forty minutes. As I said, we did try to call you, but …’

I hung up and rushed back into the kitchen, my heart pounding. The last time Hannah ran away from school, I’d found her sitting in the back garden on the bench below our kitchen window. It was a warm day today and our kitchen had a stable door, the top part of which I’d left open. Nervously I went to it and looked out, terrified that I would find her there, that she had been there all along. But she wasn’t: the garden was empty and I exhaled, relief crashing over me.

And then I turned back to the kitchen and I screamed. Because there was Hannah, standing in the door of the little pantry room that adjoined our kitchen. She must have been hiding in there – must have been there all along. She would have heard everything. She knew everything.

My legs felt weak. ‘Hannah,’ I said. ‘Oh, Hannah.’

She held my gaze for what seemed like an eternity. I don’t think I breathed the whole time. And then she walked past me and up the stairs, while I stared after her, fear pounding through me.

The rest of the day was nothing less than torture. I knew I couldn’t tell Doug what had happened. He’d told me never to make contact, had been furious at the very idea and would never forgive me for going behind his back. And now this had happened. What if Hannah told Doug? What if she told a teacher what she’d overheard? I could lose everything. Hannah, my marriage, my home … maybe even Toby. And the thought of life without my little boy was like a knife to my heart.

During the hours that followed I scarcely took my eyes off my daughter, my heart clenched with panic as I waited to find out what she’d do. But the strange thing was she seemed entirely unaffected by what she’d heard. Maybe she hadn’t understood, I told myself desperately. But I went over and over what I’d said in the kitchen, and knew there was no way our conversation could have been misconstrued. How could it? The things she’d overheard were dreadful, horrifying; surely she would have been traumatized to discover what she did.