‘Yeah,’ said Nula, who felt as if she was floating through a very bad dream.

‘Poor little kid,’ he said. ‘After that party too. At the christening. Christ, what a night we all had. Drunk as fuck, weren’t we? Even the kids were up half the night. Felt bad about that. Noisy music and all us lot dossing down everywhere and wandering the halls.’

Nula didn’t want to think about the christening party. After little Jake died, she’d sacked Chrissy. Raged at her. Told her to piss off and be glad she wasn’t being prosecuted. That she should be grateful Charlie didn’t throttle her with his bare hands. Jake had been in her care. And Jake had died.

‘Poor bloody Harlan, must have been a shock, finding his little brother like that,’ said Beezer, scoffing down half a Scotch egg.

Nula’s sore eyes focused properly on Beezer for the first time. ‘What do you mean? Milly and Harlan were asleep. They were up in the top nursery suite with Chrissy. Harlan didn’t find Jake, Chrissy did.’

‘Well no, I saw him down on the second floor. About four o’clock in the morning, it was, when I got up to have a piss. Stepped out of my bedroom and there he was.’

‘He?’

‘Harlan. In his pyjamas.’

‘What, he was in the hallway?’ asked Nula.

‘He was just coming out of the room beside yours, the one right on the end.’

Something that felt clammy and fearful was crawling up Nula’s spine. She could feel the room starting to sway. Beezer was talking about the nursery adjoining the master bedroom, the one in which baby Jake had been sleeping. Harlan had been coming out of there? Nula thought of Harlan, and of baby Jake who he was always asking to hold. But he wasn’t allowed to. He knew that. Not unless he was supervised.

He’d gone there in the night.

And next morning – oh Christ! – they’d found Jake dead in his cot.

51

For days Nula didn’t know what to do. Speak to Harlan, say What did you do? Accuse the boy when there might be nothing to accuse him of? Shake the living daylights out of him, demand the truth?

But what truth?

It could have been nothing. An innocent child, restless in the night, wanting to see his baby brother? But somehow Harlan never seemed innocent, did he. Or restless. Harlan was neat, precise, calm-eyed. And he was strictly forbidden to pick Jake up unless either Nula or Charlie or Chrissy was there.

Chrissy.