‘But why would Auntie Karen say he hurt her?’

‘I . . . I don’t know. Maybe she made a mistake.’

Cassie had her arms folded, staring at me across the kitchen. Callum and Jodi had packed up and gone, with murmured apologies and hands pressed to shoulders; his hair was still wet from the shower and his face ashen. We should all have been nursing nothing worse than skull-cracking hangovers, but look, Mike was under arrest, Karen was . . . I didn’t know where, and Bill with her. The reunion had been intended to bring us together, and now we were broken, smashed like the pictures I’d thrown down in the hallway. Someone, probably Jodi, had cleared them up so well there wasn’t a trace of glass, and I thought of my mother, how good she’d been at hiding evidence of thrown dishes, pictures, furniture.

‘How could she make a mistake?’ Cassie said, and I heard how cold her voice was.

‘I don’t know. But . . . she must have. When he’s cleared, we’ll sort this all out, I promise.’

‘When he’s cleared?’ was all she said.

‘Darling, you know Dad would never . . . this is all a big misunderstanding is all. He would never.’

Cassie’s face was unreadable. I had no idea what she thought, whether she believed her father was a good man who’d never hurt anyone, or whether, as I’d always taught her, she believed that women rarely made false allegations. I didn’t push it further. I was afraid to have that discussion.

‘Did the police speak to you, darling?’

‘They spoke to everyone.’ Cassie had her phone clutched in her hand again, as if it was some vital piece of equipment keeping her alive. She was more careful of it than someone having an affair. Affair. It knifed me in the bottom of my lungs. I was dimly aware I still had not taken it in, either what had happened to Karen or what Mike had told me. I was just functioning and breathing and doing the necessary to keep myself going. Part of me was still positive it wasn’t true, that he’d just said it in a moment of madness. That both of them were mad. The weed perhaps. Hallucinations. Was that possible?

‘And?’

‘They asked if anyone could have, like, got into the garden.’

I waited to hear her answer to this. She said nothing.

‘Cass, I know you don’t . . . I know you need your privacy. But you were out there. In the garden. Why were you?’

Nothing. Then she said, ‘Mum, I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you. Isn’t it like, conferring about evidence or something?’