She had seen pictures of Claudia in the local paper as she attended various business events and charity dos. She obviously didn’t know who Sarah was, or what her husband had done. If she did, she probably wouldn’t have let her inside the door. Today, Claudia appeared elegant, if a little tired. Claudia gestured for Sarah to sit down. The chairs were velvet with gold trim, and Sarah perched on the edge, her feet crossed beneath her. Claudia sat, resting her hands on her lap before reaching for her necklace again. Sarah worked through the online MISPER forms, gaining as much information as she could.

‘Angelica lied about staying overnight at her friend’s house, is that right?’

Claudia responded with a nod. ‘I usually ring to check where she’s staying but I dropped her off at Jennifer’s at seven to go trick-or-treating and saw her mum there. When Angelica texted me later to say she was staying over, I had no reason to doubt her.’ There was a pause. A flash of self-recrimination. ‘I should have checked.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Sarah said. But as they worked through the online forms, Claudia seemed to shrink into herself.

‘So many questions,’ she murmured. ‘What she was wearing, her last meal …’ She paused. ‘Why do you need to know what she ate?’

Sarah avoided answering the question. Such information was needed in case there was a post-mortem and stomach contents were examined. Not all bodies found were identifiable. She suppressed a shudder as Elliott’s words whispered in her thoughts. The angel is dead. All morning, it had tugged on her periphery. Why was she letting the words of a seven-year-old child affect her like this? Yet the sense of foreboding would not let up.

Sarah skimmed previous reports as they came through on her laptop. The records consisted of calls from the Irving address, recorded for officers to read and updated by control while the incident remained ongoing. Three incidents were logged on the police system from within the last year, all of them concerning Angelica Irving.

‘Has Angelica ever stayed out overnight before?’

‘No, she’s never stayed out this long. The latest she’s come home is one or two in the morning. And I know …’ Claudia raised a manicured hand, ‘it’s bad parenting on my behalf. Angelica’s only fifteen. But I’ve done everything in my power to safeguard her … apart from locking her in her room.’

Sarah lifted her head from her laptop as Claudia emitted a loud, tearless sob. It was so theatrical, Sarah wondered if it was genuine, then immediately felt guilty. The truth was, if this did escalate, Angelica’s parents would be of interest to the police. Sometimes accidents happened. Sometimes people died, and sometimes people did everything in their power to cover it up.