‘I left it in the bathroom on the glass shelf next to the sink,’ Mary Kate had said on the way down the avenue. ‘I know exactly where it is. I just need to get in there. I will break a window if I have to. It was my home – that can’t be classed as burglary.’

Joan had not responded but had thought to herself that it had been her home too, long before Mary Kate had arrived.

She was at the bathroom door in no time. The door was shut fast, but the handle turned easily. She could tell by the steam and the misted-up mirror that reflected her own ghostly image that it had just recently been used. She didn’t dare put the light on but crept over to the sink and began sweeping her hands along the shelves. Nothing. She felt her way down the brackets that held the shelves and located the bottom one, sliding her hand along, but she was in too much of a hurry and a glass jar of bath salts crashed onto the black-and-white tiled floor.

Her mouth dried, her heart beat so wildly, it hurt, and she had a sudden need for the toilet that was standing right there to the side of her. She froze and remained that way for what seemed like an eternity, until she felt she was safe. They hadn’t heard her. There was not a sound from the stairs.

Letting out the breath she’d been holding, and releasing her grip on the sink she was using to steady herself, she resumed her quest with trembling hands. She didn’t feel quite as confident now. Her bravery had dissolved as fast as the bath salts scattered across the damp floor. Her ribs were painful and her hands shook even harder, but there was no point in turning back now. She would have to finish what she’d started and so wished she hadn’t.

It had been Deidra’s idea. ‘You get the ribbon,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t be letting Mary Kate in there – she will be a wreck and go mad with the grief.’

‘I will. I want to. I’ll do it for him,’ Joan had replied. ‘If he could speak, he would tell me to. He trusted me, did the doctor.’

She’d begun her search of the shelves to the side of the sink nearest the bath and decided that maybe she needed to move across to the other side now, even though it didn’t make sense to her for Mary Kate to have placed the velvet ribbon that far away from the bath, because those shelves had been on Nicholas’s side of the bathroom.

She glanced out of the window, but she could only see the moonlit driveway; there was no sign of Mary Kate or Cat and she hoped they’d not followed her into the house. She took a step, crunching broken glass and salt crystals as she went, and started at the bottom of the other shelves. She traced her finger along the lowest one, steadily and carefully this time, and then froze as light flooded the bathroom.