“Good. So this is what we’re going to do today: I am going to lay out the summary of the case against you. And then you are going to tell me, in your own words, what happened on the twenty-first of December.”

“Can I ask something first?”

“Of course.”

“What day is it today?”

“Wednesday, the ninth of January.”

“I see.”

Christmas had gone by, and New Year’s Eve, and now she was in another year and another world.

“So,” said Mora Piozzi, looking down at her laptop. “In brief: you are charged with the murder of Stuart Robert Rees, on Friday the twenty-first of December, between the hours of ten-forty in the morning and three-thirty in the afternoon.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why those times?”

Piozzi flicked through her notes.

“There’s a CCTV camera. It’s attached to the village shop. His car drove past it.” She looked down at her laptop. “At ten thirty-four. And as you know, his body was discovered at half past four that day.”

“Yes,” said Tabitha faintly. She paused. “But there’s a spare hour then, between half past three and half past four.”

“I understand the forensic pathologist is satisfied that Rees had been dead at least an hour when his body was discovered.”

Piozzi continued speaking in a low, calm voice, as if it was all routine. “His body was found by Andrew Kane in a shed outside your back door, wrapped in plastic sheeting. You were in the house at the time of discovery. Stuart Rees’s car was parked round the back of your house, out of sight of the road. He had been stabbed multiple times by a knife, but the cause of death was the slashing of his carotid artery.” She looked up. “That’s in his neck. His blood was all over you and all over the sofa where you were sitting.”

“But that was from after he was dead,” said Tabitha.

Piozzi tapped on the keyboard of her laptop. “The police have interviewed everyone who was in the village and—”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“There must have been lots of people coming and going. They can’t have interviewed everyone.”

“Not on that day.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember? The village was blocked off. There was a big storm and a giant chestnut tree that had blight was torn up by its roots and fell across the road. There was no way out and no way in. Apparently it took most of the day to clear it.”

“I didn’t know.”

“But you were there, Tabitha, all day. You must have known.”

“I didn’t know,” Tabitha repeated. She felt like the last fragments of memory were flowing away like water through her fingers. “I don’t know if I knew.”