“I don’t know, I just did—call it intuition. We were talking about the dramatic events of the book, when it struck me that the change in your behavior was akin to that of any literary heroine who has suffered great tragedy—and grown more distant and troubled.” She raised her eyebrows. “Not only that, but there’s the anxiety you’ve never suffered from before, the claustrophobia, the compulsive behavior, all of which we’d noticed. And they’ve all cropped up since you left to look after your cousin’s baby.”

Ursula’s voice brimmed with emotion as she explained how she couldn’t stop thinking about how everything had changed: Alice’s disappearances, the secretiveness surrounding her cousin’s baby, the falling out with her mother. And then how she’d heard Penny’s children upstairs, their giggles and bumps and squeals as if they were jumping on the beds, and Penny’s glance upward and the maternal frown followed quickly by a smile. It had clicked: the baby was Alice’s. “I’m sorry, I forced Penny to tell me. But I wish it had been you.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, Ursula, but at least now you know.”

Penny had given her all the distressing details of the past six months—everything except for who the father was.

“And what about tonight?” Penny asked Alice. “Did you find out anything?”

“It was a waste of time—the Pritchards didn’t know anything, and I couldn’t wait to leave,” she replied. She didn’t want her friends to know she’d been too much of a coward to use the gun, or that she even had a gun at all. But she’d learned one thing for certain, that the Pritchards weren’t any of the baby farmers who Ruth had described, and that they no longer seemed to be part of that world either, as Olive had thought they might be. “No, nothing at all. Now I’m back to square one, apart from this name . . . Jardine. I’ll need to investigate that.”

“Maybe, but you’re not going anywhere on your own this time,” Penny said. “One of us is coming with you.”

It was a few days since her visit to the Pritchards, and Penny and Ursula had refused to let her out of their sight as they’d had no luck tracing Rex’s lead.

“Hey, what do you say about going to the cinema?” Ursula asked. “Women Aren’t Angels is on.”

Alice gave a weak smile.

“It’s a comedy. . . .”

“I don’t really feel very much like laughing,” she said flatly.

They were in Ursula’s bedroom, standing in front of a full-length mirror. Alice stared at Ursula’s masculine clothes: baggy trousers, white shirt with a woolen pullover and a striped Etonian tie, a jacket slung over her right shoulder.

“You know, Alice, I think you’ve possibly been approaching this the wrong way.”