She closes her eyes and remembers the day Keith died. It had been a beautiful April afternoon, the girls’ favourite time of year because that was when the lambs were born. They’d loved the farm in Maidstone, Kent. She had foolishly thought it was an idyllic place to bring up children. She’d always told the girls to respect the guns, never to handle or hold them without permission and supervision. Both she and Keith had been so strict about that. The girls could shoot, of course. Keith had trained them well. But he’d drummed it into them that they were never to pick up a gun unsupervised. So why had Heather picked up the gun that day? Keith had been using it himself only five minutes before. She knew he was always strict about locking the guns into the cabinet after use. He’d had to kill a cow that was ill and in pain. She remembers seeing him striding towards the barn with the shotgun over his shoulder and a look of determination on his face. Little did she know it would be the last time she’d see him alive. Less than ten minutes later, while she’d been putting out the washing, she’d heard a gunshot ring out. It hadn’t frightened her. She’d thought Keith was killing another animal. But then there was a scream. A child’s. And a deathly silence that had made her flesh turn cold. She knew the girls were playing in the barn with the lambs so she’d run as fast as she could around the side of the house just in time to see Keith staggering backwards and clutching his chest, her daughters looking on in horror, and then the gun slipping from Heather’s grasp onto the grass, fear and shock etched over both girls’ pale little faces.

By the time Margot had reached her husband he was already dead, his eyes rolled back in his head and blood blooming at the front of his shirt. She’d furiously checked for a pulse, even though she knew he was gone. And then she thought of her daughters, and how they must be feeling to see their father dead like that on the ground. She had no choice but to leave him lying there while she ushered the girls back into the house. Heather said it was an accident. That Keith had left the gun on the ground by the barn after shooting the cow and she’d picked it up. Keith, realizing his mistake at leaving the gun unattended, had shouted at her to put it down. ‘She swung the gun towards Daddy without thinking and it just went off. It was an accident,’ Flora had explained, backing up Heather’s version of events.

And Margot had had no reason to doubt any of it. Until now.