‘And what happened then?’ Paul asked the pair. It was Kelly-Anne who replied; always Kelly-Anne, Nell noted.

‘And then she stopped crying.’ Kelly-Anne gave a small shrug. ‘So we left her. I mean, that’s what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? That’s what the books say – you leave them to cry, then they learn how to put themselves to sleep, so we thought she had.’

Nell pictured the tiny body in the cot and wondered how anything that small could learn anything from being left alone in a room screaming – other than it wasn’t loved – but she kept her mouth shut. The less she said, the more they would, and give them enough rope they might just hang themselves with it.

‘So we left her for about an hour.’ She looked to Connor with a pleading expression. ‘And then you went to check on her, didn’t you?’

When Connor raised his eyes, Nell saw no grief, just a challenge to her to prove what he was about to say was wrong.

‘Yeah.’ The strength in his body was not reflected in his voice and its pitch took Nell by surprise.

‘Go on,’ Paul said.

Connor shrugged.

‘And the kid wouldn’t wake up. I shook her and sort of pushed at her chest –’ he imitated the movement with his hands, ‘– like I’ve seen on TV and that, but I couldn’t get her to wake up.’

Connor sounded uninterested, the words rehearsed, but Nell could see from the twitch in his knee he was nervous. She leaned forward.

‘So, you shook Georgie?’

Connor held her stare. ‘No, I gave her a little shake to wake her up.’

‘Is that usually how you wake your daughter, Mr O’Brian?’

Connor folded his arms, flexed his muscles. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, actually, I don’t.’

Nell watched Kelly-Anne put her hand on Connor’s arm and him shrug it away. The young woman turned to Nell, her face full of desperation.

‘He’s a good dad – he didn’t do anything to Georgie, I promise.’

‘Were you there with Mr O’Brian when he shook her?’

Before she could reply, Connor stood. His height seemed to suck the air from the room and Kelly-Anne shrank back in the face of it.

‘I didn’t bloody shake her.’ He pointed down at Kelly-Anne, red blotches on his face spreading down his neck. ‘This is all your fault, you stupid cow. If you’d just woken her when I said.’

Paul stood and held out both hands to calm the situation. ‘Mr O’Brian, no one is saying you shook your child to hurt her. Please sit back down.’

When he didn’t move, Kelly-Anne reached up to him and tugged for him to comply. When he still didn’t sit she looked imploringly at Nell.

‘He shook her to wake her, not kill her.’