Heather shrugs. ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head. The dog. The ring. So I did a bit of my own detective work.’

‘Why didn’t you come to the police?’

‘I didn’t have any evidence. I didn’t even know what I thought had happened at that point.’

‘Did you tell anyone about the ring?’

Heather sighs and blinks. ‘I told Adam. But I’ll get back to that.

‘After I found the ring but before Deirdre checked out, I asked her if she had any children. She said she had two, Clive and Norman. Her eyes shone when she spoke about them. I asked her if one of them dated a woman in the early 1990s with a son called Dylan. I didn’t say anything about Flora going missing. She pretended to think about it before answering that, yes, one of her sons had dated a woman with a son called Dylan. And then I just knew. I knew that one of her sons knew more about what had happened to Flora.

‘So I found out where Deirdre was living – this was a few weeks before she moved to Tilby so she was living with Clive in Southville still. In one of the windows hung a West Ham flag and the house was a bit grotty. And I stalked them. I watched when they left, saw who they spoke to. Clive went out mostly in the evenings. I asked around but a lot of people were scared of him. He had some dodgy connections. One thing became evident, though. He was a drug-dealer with a perversion for under-age girls.’

Margot stares at her daughter, horrified. ‘Do you mean that Clive and Flora were … together? That she knowingly ran off with him?’

Heather looks appalled. ‘No. God, no. Mum, I’m sorry, I wish it had been that. But it’s a lot worse.’

Margot’s head is pounding and bile rises up in her throat. All her worst hideous visions, the ones she tried not to think about but that came late at night when she was alone in bed, burrowing through to her brain, like a determined rat, flooded her thoughts. Visions of Flora being raped, murdered, tortured. Suffering. In pain. Screaming for her to rescue her. She puts her hands over her ears and shuts her eyes to get rid of the images. A moan escapes her lips.

‘Mum …’ Heather squeezes her hand. ‘I’m so sorry …’

‘Please … go on.’ Margot senses Ruthgow’s gaze on her but she avoids looking at him.