That had been Chadworth’s one absolute condition from the first meeting, and Theresa had built the entire strategy around it: the video and the two logs existed precisely so that no one would ever need to ask Gemma Prescott to describe, in a room full of adults, what a woman had said to her about her father.

Part Twelve: The Ninth of October

The part nobody warns you about is that it doesn’t end when the person leaves.

Chadworth had assumed — and would later be embarrassed by how naïve this was — that once Sabina was out of the house, the house would simply revert.

That the girls would exhale and be who they had been in the autumn of the previous year.

It took eight months before Gemma stopped flinching when a door closed hard.