Silver, with a dent in the handle from Lily teething on it at nine months.

It had flown overseas with me in April and come home in that same pocket.

Bell glanced at it and didn’t ask.

“His statement says he came home to an empty house.

Says the deployment was your idea, and that you left Lily with a sitter who never turned up.”

“The sitter he invented.”

“There’s a statement attached from his mother.

Patricia Nolan, sixty-one.