It was Cordy who insisted we go to the Parker house first of all. The door was open and Audrey wasn’t back from church. I didn’t like being back there. Told her we had to get down to the village before we were discovered. But she insisted. I can see her now; blood all over her face and clothes, picking up the telephone from the cradle and saying, bold as you like, that her name was Cordelia Hemlock, and that Jean Favre was dead. She didn’t ask to be connected to a number. Just said it into the receiver. When I asked her why, she looked at me like I was mad.

‘They’re listening,’ she said. ‘They’ve always been listening.’

We holed up at her house. I wanted to call the police straight away but she told me to wait.

‘They won’t be long,’ she said.

She looked at herself then. Saw the state of herself and I think she realized what had happened, and what she had done. I can see her still; half-nodding to herself, then wiping away the tears.

I ran her a bath. There didn’t seem much else to do of any use. I made tea, because that’s what you do. Around one p.m., John and the kids turned up, frantic. The pans had boiled over and they had played the recording. What was I thinking of? What had happened?

They joined me in Cordelia’s kitchen. She was upstairs, soaping herself human again.

The men who arrived mid-afternoon were smartly dressed and drove big, grey cars. One of them smelled of cigars. The one who knocked on the door was a slight man. He had a peculiarly-shaped head that was wider at the bottom than the top, so he looked like a lampshade. He had thinning red hair. He wore a pinstripe suit and a black hat and though it was bitterly cold on the doorstep, he didn’t look uncomfortable. He asked to see Mrs Hemlock. John was at my side in a flash. The boys were behind us, like we were trying to form a wall of bodies between this man and Cordelia.

‘She had to do it,’ I said, straight out. ‘He were killing her. Go up there. See what he’s been doing. See what’s been living among us!’

He let me rant for a while. Then he angled his head to see between myself and John and I turned to see Cordelia walking into the kitchen. She was pale and her hair was wet and the bruise in her hairline was an ugly, blue-black mound the size of a cracked egg.

‘Let him in,’ she said, quietly. ‘Thanks for staying with me, Flick. But you can go now. Things will be OK.’