‘That’s what my family wanted people to believe.’ Sarah inhaled. ‘He killed my little brother first. Mum locked me in the wardrobe while he was shooting my gran and grandad, and she kept the key.’ Sadness coursed through her as she returned to Blackhall Manor. To the smell of gunpowder. The sound of her mother’s guttural screams. ‘She was shot trying to defend me. I remember hearing my father’s footsteps … then the police sirens. He blasted through the wardrobe, but I was hiding under some coats and the bullet skimmed my head.’ She pushed back her fringe, displaying the jagged scar on her forehead. ‘They found Dad dead. Everyone was dead … except for me. In the wardrobe. Bleeding.’

Her eyes met Gabby’s and she saw her own pain reflected back at her. ‘They saved my life, but I was in a coma for months. My other grandparents moved me to a private hospital in the next county and the media lost interest. The locals presumed I’d died and that was the way we wanted it to stay.’ She sighed at the memory of everyone fussing around her. How she had sat in the bedroom of her grandparents’ house for months, feeling numb. Taking her mother’s maiden name, she’d tried to reinvent herself but like Elliott, her nightmares dragged her into a world of terror time and time again. The death of her family was something she had been unable to process for years. Her mother’s parents had been too paralysed by grief to be able to help her.

‘It’s not difficult to get a rumour going in Slayton if you have the right people on your side,’ Sarah continued. ‘And I had friends back then, friends who thought I deserved some peace after everything I went through.’ Maggie. What a star she had been, even at that young age. ‘Besides,’ Sarah said. ‘They were right. Part of me died with my family that day. Fourteen-year-old Sarah Middleton is back in the house still sitting in that wardrobe and I cannot bear to step inside there. So please don’t make me go back.’

Gabby turned her head, swiping a tear from her eye. She coughed, clearing her throat. Sarah was flooded with relief. ‘Who owns the house?’ Gabby’s face was devoid of the anger it had radiated just moments before.