Chrissy had suggested Nula get some answers, but how? Charlie was away on business. He was always away, since it had happened with little Jake. It was like he couldn’t face the reality of their situation, that their child had died. He wouldn’t even visit the grave with Nula. He got furious if she so much as mentioned it, so she had to go there alone and stand there looking at the tiny prayer book headstone and wondering why?

But then she knew why, didn’t she? It was because they were wicked.

She thought back to those wild parties they’d once had. The unbridled sex, the swinging they’d once indulged in, before the babies, before her depression set in and gripped her so tightly in its merciless iron jaws. And the drugs business. That, more than anything, meant they were damned to hell. Didn’t it? Maybe they deserved to lose Jake. But her mind kept going back to Chrissy. He’s not ‘there’.

Christ! What did that mean?

But Nula knew. Of course she did. She hadn’t ever allowed herself to fully acknowledge it before, but she let the thoughts stream through her head now and they made her dizzy with dread. Harlan wasn’t normal. He didn’t interact properly with other children. Not even Milly, really. There was that one village boy who trailed around after him, that surly bullish creature Nipper, but could you really say that he was Harlan’s friend? No. You could not. He was more of a follower, she always thought.

Mostly Harlan played alone, out there in the hall, and when he finished playing he would take his toys back upstairs and put them in the box marked HARLAN in the top nursery. He was meticulously tidy; in fact, he hated anyone touching his toys. If any went astray, he threw a spectacular strop that verged on hysteria.

He’s not right.

Chrissy’s wild, frightened eyes.

He was leaning over me with a knife in his hand.

Of course the kid had only been mucking about. Chrissy had gone on to say that he’d laughed and then she’d taken the damned thing off him, told him he should never play with knives. It was only a joke, he’d explained. He didn’t mean any harm, he was just joking, couldn’t she take a joke? It was an old bone-handled knife from the kitchen anyway, nothing really dangerous. But Chrissy hadn’t found it at all amusing. If it really had been a joke then it had been a pretty damned poor one, and she’d been shaken by it.