The curtains in the children’s rooms were open and their beds empty. It was as though the soul of our home had left with them. The silence scared me.

I went straight upstairs to the bathroom for a shower. The smell of urine hung off my clothes. The sweat – that now reeked of that recent fear – was cold and wet in the lining of my suit jacket as I shrugged it off. In the mirror, before the steam from the water obscured my face, I saw my ghostly, unkempt appearance. My thick eyebrows would usually enhance my eyes, bringing out the blue, but instead they hooded them, and my lips were cracked where they would usually be plump. If I had forced a smile like Audrey Hepburn’s, they would bleed.

Just as I opened the shower door, I heard something outside the bathroom and I grabbed a towel to cover myself. Blood rushed through my head, my heart was in my mouth.

‘Hello?’ I called out, unable to hide the trepidation in my voice.

‘Gemma?’

I dropped my head in my hands and cried out with relief. ‘Peter! Oh my God!’

When he opened the bathroom door, it was as though it was the first time I had ever laid eyes on him, as though I fell in love with him all over again. There he was, his face scrunched from sleep and his body musty in his boxers as I held him to me.

‘You’re here!’

‘Of course I’m here.’

‘I didn’t think you’d see my text. I thought it was too late.’

‘I couldn’t sleep until I heard from you.’

I laughed and I saw tears well up in his eyes as he watched me laugh.

‘Can you believe this is happening?’

‘No, I literally can’t. Rosie won’t talk to me. She’s clammed up completely. The only information I know is what DC Miles told me.’ He was shaking his head, bemused, searching my equally distraught face for answers I couldn’t give.

‘She’s lying.’

‘Of course she’s lying.’

‘Did she really not say anything about it to you?’

‘Totally stonewalled me, and everyone else. In fact, she was mute all evening. She wouldn’t even open her mouth to ask for the most basic things.’

‘Does she understand what she’s done?’

‘She can’t have meant to lie. She must have got her words twisted or got carried away or something.’

‘Maybe’. I thought back to my own interview, and how pushy DC Miles had been, and how confused I had become, but remembered Philippa Letwin’s information about TED: Tell me, Explain to me, Describe to me. The police were not allowed to lead a child. But I was not in the mood to spell this out to Peter. Rosie could wrap Peter around her little finger, she was his princess, the apple of his eye, there was no way Gemma could broach with Peter the idea that this whole nightmare might have been predicated on malice or spite or revenge.

‘When Rosie’s home, we’ll talk to her together.’

‘What if she changes her statement and the police think I’ve forced her to?’

When I thought of talking to Rosie, I couldn’t disassociate her from the police, as though they were in cahoots and I was their shared enemy.

‘Kids must lie to the police all the time, they must be used to it.’

‘I can’t believe she said all those awful things about me,’ I said, feeling the tears push at my tired, dry eyes. For the first time that day, in the face of Peter’s unquestioning loyalty, I became the victim when before I had been the accused. There was acute relief in this, but there was horror in it too: to play the victim, I had to believe that my own daughter had turned against me.

‘Are you okay?’ He stepped closer, took my arms and flipped them over, as though checking them for damage, and ran his hands slowly, gently over our baby inside me, and finally checked behind each ear. I laughed, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Making sure you’re intact.’

‘Can you believe I’ve been locked up in a cell, Peter? And they took my fingerprints and everything.’

‘Oh Gemma.’ He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, which still felt raw. I winced. He stopped kissing them and brought them right up to his face.

‘These look sore. What did they do to you?’

I pulled them back to me and looked at the thread-thin lines of broken skin.

‘Nothing. I tripped.’

‘How did you trip?’

‘I broke my fall up the steps on the way in, that’s all. It’s doesn’t matter. I’m fine. Honestly, I fine.’

If the police had seen the footage of me on CCTV in the cell, they might not have identified the meek victim I was portraying in front of my husband now. It was simpler to be the victim, to ignore the bad decisions that might have brought me here. I didn’t want to confront the fact that the past might finally be catching up with me.

He moved closer to me and kissed my lips and then ran his finger along the cracked skin. ‘Have a shower and come downstairs. I’ll make you some toast and tea.’

I ran my eyes across Peter’s gentle features, wondering if I could tell him about the fear and anger that had overwhelmed me in that cell; contemplating how my true feelings would sound to him. I felt a pain in my heart, like a tear, when I realised it might be dangerous to say too much to this man, my husband, with whom I had been through so much.

Before the recorded interview with DC Miles, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to imagine a scenario when anyone – let alone Peter – would have to choose, when any kind of rift would be great enough to pull us apart, but I was changed. My world was to be divided between those who believed me, and those who doubted me. I would be on the look-out for signs in everyone close to me.

I could never forget that Rosie was his flesh and blood.

Cynicism and distrust had entered this new world of mine, and it sent bolts of loneliness ricocheting through me.

---

My body was wrapped up in a snuggly dressing gown and my skin had that after-shower clean feeling. The physical smells and sensations of the cell were sloughed off. The toast and the tea were warming me inside.

‘Is there really nothing this Philippa woman can do?’ Peter asked, buttering more toast than we could ever eat.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘So you’re really saying that this social worker woman will have the power to stop you being alone with your own children?’

Peter was lagging behind. My shock had been and gone. After I had been released from the station on bail, Philippa had taken me for a coffee at a coffee shop next door to the police station. She explained what could pan out for us as a family over the next few weeks: safeguarding plans, surprise social worker visits, intrusive questioning, police statements garnered from family and friends, doctors’ examinations, doctors’ reports, medical histories, teachers’ reports, multi-agency meetings, and so on. Our lives were to be exposed to strangers in gruesome detail. Much of it I wasn’t able to take it in. And there was nothing I could do about any of it anyway, unless Rosie changed her story. The CPS hearing, set on 4 December 2017, four weeks away, was a future I couldn’t fathom.

‘Yes, it’s called a safeguarding plan.’

‘I don’t understand how it’s going to work,’ Peter said.

‘Basically, you’ll have to police me.’ My cheeks burned with fresh humiliation.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You’ll have to. If I am caught alone with them, I’ll be in deeper shit than I already am.’

‘But how will they know?’

‘Social Services make surprise visits apparently, and they’ll ask the kids and we can’t ask the kids to lie.’

The irony of that statement hung in the air between us, but both of us let it go. Plainly we weren’t ready to talk about Rosie again. The logistics of a safeguarding plan was easier somehow. There were clear parameters to work with.

‘And that crazy maniac next door will be watching us like a hawk,’ I added, glaring out through the kitchen window.

‘What about when I work late? Or have to go on conferences? I mean, I have three scheduled over three weekends between now and Christmas.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling like I didn’t know anything anymore. ‘Harriet can’t do weekends because of college.’

‘And seriously, how often do I get home earlier than nine? Once a week at the most? Can Harriet stay later than eight?’

The reality of the situation seemed to be hitting him like a series of bullets.

‘No. She has a bar job. That’s why she never babysits for us.’

‘What about the mornings? I leave at seven!’

‘Harriet can’t do the mornings either. She has to be in college at nine.’

‘I won’t even be able to nip out for bike rides at the weekend or meet Jim for an afternoon pint.’

‘Welcome to a woman’s world.’

‘Women don’t like bike rides or beer.’

‘Ha bloody ha.’ But I smiled. Peter could always get a smile out of me, even in the worst situations.

‘It’s just the principle of it that pisses me off.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I cried, reminding him of who the victim was.

‘Sorry. I know it’s worse for you.’

I deflated. ‘No. The whole thing is horrendous for all of us.’ A fresh wave of anger rose in me. I pushed it down. There was going to be no more hitting walls.

‘What if they stay with your sister until this is all over?’

‘She’s too far from school.’

‘What about an au pair?’

‘We can’t have someone new here while this is going on.’

‘Well what the hell are we going to do then?’ he yelled, throwing his hands in the air.

‘I honestly don’t know. I can’t ask Mum, she’s always got way too much on.’

Peter stuck his hands in the air again. ‘That’s it! You can ask Helen. That would solve all our problems.’

‘I said I can’t ask Mum. She’d have to give up work.’

‘She’d have to take a break for a month, not even. That’s not even half of one term. I’m sure the students would survive without her.’

‘Would she survive without them?’

‘Aren’t her grandchildren more important?’

I shook my head. ‘It’s too much to ask. We went through all this before we hired Harriet.’

‘Maybe she wants an excuse to slow things down a bit. She never stops complaining about the bloody place.’

‘Don’t be fooled by that old routine. She’s spent thirty years complaining about it, it doesn’t mean anything. There’s no way we can ask her to give it up.’

‘God, Gemma, you are exasperating. We can’t do this on our own. You have to ask her.’

‘I’m too tired to think about this now, way too tired. I can’t even face the thought of telling her, let alone asking such a massive favour.’

‘She’s your mother and she loves you.’

‘We’ll see how much when I speak to her.’

I picked up the second piece of toast and then put it back on the plate. The thought of eating it made my stomach turn.

He reached to the top of the cupboard where he kept the whisky.

‘How’s about a hot toddy to cheer us up?’

‘God, yes, a virgin one for me. I’ll light the fire next door.’

I knelt at the wood-burner in the sitting room, enjoying the humbling simplicity of the process of crumpling the newspaper and fanning the kindling.

Peter joined me with two mugs. ‘Want me to do it?’

‘Why do men always think they can light fire better than women?’

‘I don’t know about other women, but if your track record is anything to go by...’

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of laughing, but I was inside. It was true. I rarely got a fire going the first time.

The flames were tentative, slowly melting the paper with blue heat. Patiently and gently, I blew on the flame until one stick of kindling burst into flames. ‘There you go, see?’ Maybe it was patience I lacked.

I stretched out on the sofa, with my feet at the end near the fire, and my mug resting on my chest, the aroma of hot lemon and honey filling my head, the fire warming my socks. Peter’s position mirrored mine on the opposite sofa.

We both stared into the flames as they leapt about angrily.

‘At the station there was this crazy woman ranting and raving and she called me a stuck-up bitch.’

‘Charming.’

‘She was really pretty,’ I continued, like this was relevant. ‘She had these really trendy boots on. If you saw her on the street, you’d think she was as normal as anything.’

‘What was she in there for?’

‘She’d headbutted a bouncer outside a pub.’

‘Nice.’

‘She probably was nice, without the booze.’

‘Headbutting someone is pretty defining.’

‘Haven’t you ever felt like headbutting someone?’

He snorted, ‘No!’ then added, ‘I probably have, actually.’

‘I have too.’

‘But neither of us have ever done it,’ Peter said.

‘That’s maybe just luck.’

‘Or good sense.’

‘But we’re not always sensible, not always, not every second of the day.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ he said in a manly sensible voice, clearing his throat.

‘Seriously though, one moment of madness and that’d be it, your life would be over. It would undo everything good that you had ever done.’

‘She’s lucky she wasn’t in for manslaughter.’

‘I’m not saying it was okay what she did, I’m just saying that maybe after a lifetime of shit, she just snapped.’

‘It would have to have been a hell of a lot of shit.’

‘What if her dad beat her up, or her mum even? What if she’d grown up with violence?’

‘A lot of people come from the most grim backgrounds and still don’t go headbutting people just because they’ve had a few too many shandies.’

‘It’s not an excuse, I’m just saying it might be her story,’ I said, propping myself up a little on a cushion. ‘It’s so easy to judge. None of us know who we really are until we’re tested or how we would behave under the wrong circumstances.’

‘I feel guilty now. I want to give the girl a hug.’

I inspected my hands. They burned as though they were two balls of fire, and my wrists were beginning to ache.

‘Part of me is not sure any of it was real.’

‘Imagine what Rosie went through.’

‘Now that makes me want to headbutt DC Miles,’ I said.

He snorted through a sip of whisky. ‘There’s that Campbell-woman spirit I know and love,’ he laughed, reaching far over the coffee table to squeeze my shoulder.

‘Superwomen. All of us,’ I said flatly, with a flash of my palms slamming the wall.

‘Wait till your mum hears about this. She’ll be campaigning with her students outside the police station holding placards with “Rough Justice for Gemma” on them.’

I felt the swell of a belly laugh form in my stomach but it didn’t quite make it out. ‘Stop it. I wouldn’t put it past her.’

‘It’s funny with your mum, she looks out with the fairies most of the time, but it’s staggering how scary she can be.’

‘All those ailments though.’

‘Mother of God, her handbag is like a pharmaceutical’s factory.’

We turned our heads to smile at each other and then looked back to the fire. I took a sip of my drink.

‘And there’s you, who won’t even take a paracetamol for a headache.’

‘I’m not like her at all,’ I stated firmly.

‘You’re more like her than your sister is.’

‘So you’re saying I am like her?’

‘You and your mum are both quite determined when you want to be.’

‘So is Jacs,’ I said, flipping my argument, suddenly defensive of my mother’s spirit. ‘She’s as stubborn as an ox, just like Mum. Remember woodshedgate?’

I laughed out loud at the memory of Jackie and Richard’s argument over their woodshed. Richard had promised he would build it – it was pretty vital considering they heated their house with a log burner – but he was notoriously lazy and hated asking tradesmen to do the job he knew he could do himself. Months had passed as their log pile on the driveway had become soggier by the day, until Jackie had taken the job on.

‘I’ve never seen Rich so put out,’ I laughed.

There was a lull as we listened to a log slipping in the fire. A moment of insecurity.

‘Who needs men, eh?’ Peter added.

‘We want you more than need you, darlings,’ I grinned, holding up my mug to cheers him.

He sent me a small melancholy smile back, ‘At least I’m wanted.’

‘Mum taught us to stand on our own two feet. That’s a good thing this day and age,’ I said defensively.

‘God forbid you might ever need anyone, Gemma.’ There was an edge in his voice that went beyond the mild joshing.

‘What happened to liking the Campbell-woman spirit?’

‘It has its moments.’

‘Give me an example of a bad moment.’

‘I’m not stupid. You’re tricking me into an argument.’

‘Promise I won’t get annoyed. Cross my heart, hope to die.’

‘I can’t think of anything specific.’

‘Go on. Try.’

‘I’m not sure this is wise.’

‘I’m not going to start headbutting you if that’s what you’re scared of.’

‘Okay. When you had to go for that interview for the promotion a couple of years ago, you didn’t confide in me and tell me you were shitting yourself or even that you wanted the job, you just got grumpier by the day and then the night before you suddenly made Rosie throw out all her plastic toys.’

‘She didn’t play with them anymore!’

‘Except one.’

‘That bloody diary of hers. I’d be reading it now if she hadn’t taken it with her.’

‘How do you know she has?’

‘She never sleeps over anywhere without it.’

‘The only plastic toy you let her keep is now her most treasured possession.’

I sighed, smarting at the criticism in spite of promising not to.

‘I wish I’d never asked now,’ I sulked. ‘I don’t know how to explain it. When I’m stressed I see mess in places I never did before.’

‘Spoken like a true pro.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with keeping things organised if it helps me think stuff through, is there?’

‘But you shut everyone else out, including the kids.’

‘Do I?’

‘A bit.’

‘I never thought of it that way.’

I had never thought of my self-sufficiency as anything but the one good trait that I had inherited from Mum. How discombobulating it was to think otherwise.

‘I suppose when I think back to how amazing Mum was when I was young and when I think of how lucky I am in comparison, I just think I don’t have anything to complain about.’

‘Everyone has something to complain about.’

‘Mum was a proper trooper though,’ I said absently, but as I said it I had a flash of Mum’s dark bedroom after my father had left her, left us, with the curtains drawn and a glass of water in my hand. I had wanted her for something – I couldn’t remember what – and had known it was impossible to ask her for anything when the curtains were drawn on her migraines. I had wanted her but couldn’t have her, and I learnt to find a way to get on by myself.

‘It might be good for her to be here with all of us,’ I said, trying to find justification for the arrangement, ways she could gain from it, to dismiss how unconditional and selfless her move here would be if she accepted.

‘I really believe it would be, you know,’ Peter said.

‘I’ll try her tomorrow,’ I agreed, unable to imagine asking her for such a colossal kindness. It was not supposed to be a test of how much she loved me, or her grandchildren. But now faced with the task of asking her, I knew it would become exactly that.