Belle gave a smile. ‘Yeah, maybe.’ But she wondered where? Who did she ever meet, out here in the sticks? Sometimes, she felt so restless. So confined.

‘So who comes on to you that you don’t want to, then?’ asked Milly after a pause.

‘Oh, you know.’ Belle frowned. ‘People.’

‘Who, though? Come on.’

Belle flopped back too. For a while she lay there, looking at the sky in silence. Milly didn’t push, she just waited.

‘Harlan,’ said Belle at last.

Milly sent her a sideways look, holding one arm up over her eyes to shield them from the sun. She’d suspected this. She’d seen how Harlan was too touchy-feely with Belle, how Belle always flinched away from him. ‘Is he a pest?’

‘He’s a pain in the arse,’ said Belle. ‘Never seems to take no for an answer, the prat.’

Milly was silent for a moment. Wondered whether she should say anything. Then she said it anyway. ‘I found something, you know. In Harlan’s room.’

Belle propped herself up on one elbow. ‘Oh? What?’

‘Something weird,’ said Milly.

‘Well come on. Tell me. Something to do with those things he keeps down in that reptile house of his, I suppose.’

‘No, nothing like that. I shouldn’t have looked in his room, I do know that.’

‘What’s in there that’s so shocking? I know he keeps lizards up there in a tank. He asked me to go up there once and see them. Which I did not. They’re cold-blooded, aren’t they. Like him. I can see why he likes them so much. So come on, what was it? What did you see in there?’

‘It was a tape recorder. And . . .’ Milly hesitated. Would Belle blab about this to anyone? She wasn’t sure. But she had to say it now, or choke on it. ‘I played a cassette tape that was on it.’

‘And?’ prompted Belle.

‘It was a tape recording of the baby. Of Jake. Crying.’

Belle was very still.

‘Do you remember how my mum used to say she could hear the baby, crying? And they thought she was imagining it, didn’t they? Before she was committed that first time.’

Belle sat up sharply. ‘You’re fucking joking.’

‘I wish I was. Mum told me that Uncle Beezer saw Harlan at four in the morning after Jake’s christening party, going into Jake’s nursery.’

Belle was suddenly pale. ‘Then they found Jake dead.’

Milly nodded.

Belle dragged her hands through her hair. ‘Hold on. Wait. Maybe it wasn’t Jake crying. Maybe it was some other kid, and Harlan recorded it to freak your mum out. He’d think that was funny.’

Milly shuddered and hugged her knees. ‘No. It was Jake. I’d know Jake’s cry anywhere. I could never forget it. Never.’