She nodded, this time taking a calming breath before speaking, determined not to sound like a blabbering idiot. She kept it concise, sticking to the basic facts, relieved when the shaking slowly started to subside, and grateful to Tank who had wandered through, positioning himself on the floor between the two of them, his head resting on Hannah’s knee. His warm presence helped steady her further as she stroked the soft fur on his head.

‘Are you able to tell me anything about the car?’ Liam asked when she finished.

‘I couldn’t see with the headlights. I think the full beam was on. It was blinding.’

‘But did you get a sense of the size of the vehicle? Was it a small car or something bigger like a people carrier or a van?’

She thought about that for a moment and about the SUV that Liam drove. ‘It was a similar size to your car. That’s why I thought it was you at first.’

‘Okay, and was it a man driving?

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Tall, short, skinny, bulky?’

Again she considered. ‘Same sort of build and height as you.’

‘Whoever it was didn’t speak at all?’

‘No. And when I started to go over. That’s when they left.’

‘You approached the car?’

Hannah couldn’t tell if Liam was impressed or incredulous at her stupidity.

‘I didn’t know what else to do. There was nowhere I could go to get away.’

He seemed to think about that for a moment. ‘No, I guess there wasn’t,’ he agreed, getting up and moving to the window that looked down the drive. He glanced out briefly before closing the blind, then locking the door.

‘Whoever it was didn’t want to be seen,’ Hannah noted.

‘So it’s possible it could have been a woman?’

Hannah paused. Whoever it was had seemed to be a similar height and build to Liam, but was she really sure? The lights had dazzled her and, honestly, she hadn’t seen enough to tell. ‘I guess.’ She remembered the flowers, a shiver coming over her. ‘You think it was Eileen Wickham?’

‘I wasn’t here, Hannah. Only you know what you saw.’

It would make sense given that Mrs W had disappeared. Rosie’s break-in, the flowers, and the note. It all tied in.

Hannah wasn’t quite sure how she felt, knowing the monster from her childhood might have followed her out here and could have been standing just twenty feet away.

What did she want?

She had made warnings when they were kids, telling them terrible things that would happen if they ever revealed to anyone what had gone on, but that had been years ago and they had been empty threats, made purely to buy their silence. She wouldn’t actually act on them. Would she?