Nula didn’t think there could be anything worse than losing her baby. She wondered when it would stop hurting, when all the madness would go away. When the crying would stop. Maybe it never would.

When she got home, there was an unknown car on the drive. Paul, her driver, parked up beside it and she let herself into the house. Young Sammy was on the door today. So many people they had to have around them now. To her surprise, when she walked into the sitting room, there was Charlie. And there was her doctor, a tall bespectacled man with thick black hair, and there was a woman with him, petite, blonde, with harshly indented cheekbones and dark circles under her big cornflower-blue eyes.

‘Here she is,’ said Charlie, jumping to his feet.

Doctor Benson stood up. ‘Nula,’ he said in greeting. ‘This is Sophia Burnett, one of the clinical psychologists attached to the surgery, I believe you’ve met before . . . ?’

They had met. Lots of times. Sophia came forward and shook Nula’s hand. The last time they’d spoken had been well over a year ago, when Nula had told her for the hundredth time about her dead baby crying, and the fact that Harlan had tried to kill her.

‘Hello, Nula,’ said Sophia.

‘We’ve come out to see you because your husband asked us to,’ said Dr Benson.

‘Oh? Why?’ Nula looked a question at Charlie.

‘I’ve been concerned about you, doll,’ said Charlie, looking sheepish. ‘Worried, you know? When you started on about still hearing the crying . . .’

‘I did hear it,’ said Nula. I still do.

‘I know. I know that. And when you started ripping my desk apart trying to get information about Harlan, and saying he’d tried to kill you, nonsense like that . . .’

‘It’s not nonsense.’

‘Babes, it is. It’s . . .’ Charlie hesitated, groping for the right words. ‘It’s not your fault. You’ve had a tough time and it’s all been playing on your mind. The stress of losing the baby, it’s upset you, I understand that, and what I think . . .’ He glanced at Dr Benson, at Sophia Burnett. ‘What we all think is that you need some time away. Someplace where you can rest up and recover. You know?’

‘What, a holiday?’ Nula asked, agog. Charlie hated holidays.

‘No, more like a retreat. You know the sort of thing. Like that place where the film stars go when they need a . . . a rest?’

Charlie stood there looking awkward.

Nula gazed at her husband, at the two others standing there, and the penny dropped at last. They wanted her committed. They thought she was losing her mind.

‘What?’ she said, dry-mouthed. Then she thought, oh God – to get away from this place. From the echoing empty halls, the eerie sighing of the wind around the eaves, the sobbing from the empty nursery. From Harlan.