“She’s had emotional problems for years, Sunniva.

Psychological things.

My family does everything we can to take care of her.” He lied with a smoothness that frightened me more than a shout would have — the easy, practiced fluency of a man who had told this particular lie many times, to many people, and been believed.

That fluency was the thing I kept turning over all morning, because it told me something about Percival that the shed itself had not.

In the shed I had seen what he did.

On the phone I heard how he talked about it, and the how was almost worse.