My father is on the floor. On his hands and knees on the floor. A bowl to his side, a brush in his hand, he’s scrubbing at a stain on the cream carpet. Bewildered, I look from him to the candy-pink froth forming on top of it. ‘Dad?’ I murmur, my voice small and tremulous.

He pauses, brings the brush around again and then pulls himself up. Sitting back on his haunches, he wipes an arm across his forehead and then turns his gaze towards me.

‘What’s happened?’ I ask, my voice emerging a dry croak.

My father’s gaze lingers, searching my face as if he doesn’t know me. He looks older, smaller somehow, his eyes rheumy and uncertain.

‘Dad! What’s happened?’ I yell. The house, too silent, even with the low rumble of voices and car doors slamming outside, seems to close in on me.

Dad’s expression changes as I step towards him, hardening to the aggravated, impatient look I’ve so often seen him wear – when dealing with ‘imbeciles’.

When Sarah challenged him on that long-ago summer’s day, talking back to him, disrespecting him, he’d worn that look then. My stomach churns, as I hear it over again, Sarah’s shrill shrieking, the sharp slap. The soft thud. Silence.

Oh, dear God. Did my mother challenge him? He would undoubtedly have been trying to lie his way out of this latest soul-crushing debacle. ‘Dad, talk to me. Where’s Mum?’

‘Gone,’ he says, and goes back to his cleaning.

‘Gone where?’ I shout, louder, careless of who might hear. ‘How? They would have seen her. The reporters.’ If my mum was injured, they wouldn’t have failed to notice. They would have been baying like dogs over a bone, gleefully relaying that information to me, trying to extract information from me. Through my rising terror, I realise this fact.

Pausing again, he studies me curiously, clearly registers my incomprehension. ‘She called a taxi to pick her up at the park entrance,’ he says, his tone flat.

I scan his face. Liar. The word ricochets around my head.

‘Do you honestly think she would have left by the front door?’ he asks me. ‘Run the gauntlet of that pack of wolves out there?’ Sighing in despair, he looks away and continues to try to clean the stain from the carpet.

I stare hard at him, trying to digest. ‘Was she hurt?’ I ask him, forcing the words past the dry lump in my throat. Don’t lie to me. Please don’t lie to me.

Straightening up, he looks again in my direction. ‘You really do have a low opinion of me, don’t you, Karla?’ he says quietly, his expression a combination of hurt and regret.

I don’t answer. There’s no way to answer.