When we pull up outside the Hamptons’ house, I turn to Emerson. ‘I’ll do this alone.’ The Hamptons don’t need an audience for their grief. Getting out, I walk down the path to the front door, but Stephanie opens it before I get there. When she takes in my silence, then my expression, a stricken look crosses her face and her hand goes to her mouth. Turning around, she runs back in, calling out to her husband.

‘James. James …’

Going inside, I find them huddled together in the hallway. ‘Please,’ I say quietly, closing the door behind me. ‘Can we sit down?’ I gesture towards the sitting room, where only last night they were telling me about Hollie. All of us clinging on to hope that we’d find her alive, little knowing that hope was futile, because from the way the ice had frozen over her, it was clear Hollie had been dead for some while.

‘Where is she?’ James’s voice is harsh and shaky at the same time.

‘We found her in the grounds of Park House.’ I speak slowly, quietly. ‘She was in the pool.’

Stephanie’s in denial. ‘No … She’s not …’

‘I’m so sorry.’ I pause to let my words sink in, at the same time watching for any sign they already know. If Hollie’s death turns out to be suspicious, they will be suspects. ‘She’d obviously been there for a while. There was nothing we could do.’ We’ve all considered worst-case scenarios, but when it happens, nothing prepares you for the shock. Their faces are disbelieving, stricken with pain as they struggle to take it in, trying to twist my words, make them into anything other than the truth.

When James gets up, it’s as though he’s physically shrunk. ‘I want to see her.’ His face is ashen. ‘Please take me to her.’

‘We’ll need you to identify her body in due course but not just now. We’ll be carrying out an investigation into how she died and exactly when. It’s entirely possible that it was accidental, but we have to rule out the possibility that it wasn’t.’

‘But why was she there?’ Stephanie cries. ‘She doesn’t even know the Marinos. She had no reason to be in their garden.’

‘It’s my fault.’ James’s face is grey, his body rigid with shock as he stares at me. ‘It’s all my fault.’

I watch him, knowing this is a natural response when a parent loses a child, that self-blame and guilt are common emotions at times like this. ‘I think we’ll find it was an accident,’ I say gently, feeling my heart twist as Stephanie takes his arm. As always, imagining how it would feel to be a parent who’d have done anything they could to protect their child.

‘But I knew something was going on,’ he mutters.