‘It’s because he knows how brave you are, Florence. Isn’t that right? I bet you hardly even cried.’

She nodded. ‘I got biscuit for being so brave.’

‘How about you go back and keep playing with Gigi, and when Mummy’s finished talking to Alexis we’ll go get ice cream?’

Florence’s eyes widened. ‘Ice cream!’ She ran back to the kitchen.

Camilla leaned down and unclipped Arthur from the buggy and picked him up. I led Camilla through to the TV room and closed the door.

‘She wouldn’t have been alone for more than ten minutes. My colleagues got there very soon after he must’ve left.’

‘But why—’

I held up a hand. ‘Frederick is in trouble. It looks as though he may be working with some very bad people. We think that’s why he ran, why he left Florence alone.’

Camilla placed Arthur on the floor and handed him a toy mobile phone out of her bag. She slumped onto the sofa. Her hands were shaking. ‘That bastard. Poor Florence. How could he leave her? How could he?’

I sat down on the armchair opposite her.

‘Camilla, you know . . . you know Frederick is not right, don’t you? That he isn’t normal.’

She looked up at me and smiled. And then she let out a sob. She clasped a hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve waited so long to hear someone say that.’ She stared at me, eyes glistening. ‘He made me feel that I was not normal. That I made him get angry. That I made him not care. That if I did better, if I was more like he wanted me to be, then he would be happy. Then we would be happy.’

Camilla stared at Arthur smashing the buttons on his phone. A tinny ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ started playing. Her whole body was shaking.

‘Has he . . . has he always been like this?’ I needed to keep her talking. She looked as though she was on the brink of losing it and I needed to learn as much as I could about Frederick.

‘When we first met it was a few years after university. At a dinner party. He was handsome, charming, very bright – all the girls were fawning over him. When he asked for my number I felt so lucky. That he had chosen me. And when he proposed I couldn’t believe it. I was over the moon.’ She looked down at her rings and twirled them round and round. ‘I did wonder how well I really knew him. He never seemed to drop his guard. He was . . . too perfect. He always said the right thing.’

‘And after you got married?’