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a general sense of foreboding and anxiety.
    That old sense of security, taken totally for granted before, had quickly evaporated and fear and anger had taken its place. Now neighbours stood round in conspiratorial huddles, speculating on who could have done such things to Chantal and then Adam. Since Chantal’s brutal rape and murder, the Fosters’ neighbours had roughly fallen into two camps – the first too stricken, shocked and embar -
    rassed by the news to do more than mutter their condolences, the second supportive to the point of being intrusive: knocking on the door at all hours of the day and night, offering to do shopping, washing, cooking, take the girls to school, or just come in and sit with them.
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    For the most part Paul wished they would go away but Michelle wanted to talk about it all the time, it was her way of coping. He envied his wife her ability to let it all out. When she wasn’t sobbing loudly, she was angrily slamming pots and pans. Only at night, after she had taken the sedative prescribed by their doctor, did she grow still; but only temporarily, for even then, she would toss and turn and call out in the dark, her dreams shot through with horrific visions.
    On the day of the funeral the sun came up hot and heavy as it had every day that summer. Michelle Foster sat on the edge of her bed, head slumped, staring at her feet. Her toenail polish was chipped and that wouldn’t do. She had to look her best for her baby. Preoccupied with this silly detail, she didn’t notice her husband Paul set down a cup of tea on the bedside table and gently touch her long black curls before going back downstairs to get the girls their breakfast. Reality came back to her then like a hammer blow to her head, the impossible truth bludgeoning her brain. My baby is going to heaven today, she kept telling herself, and yet still she didn’t want to believe it.
    Michelle didn’t know how she was going to get through the day ahead; a part of her deep inside couldn’t quite take in the fact that Chantal wasn’t coming back, and occasionally when she heard Paul’s key in the lock after work she half expected her eldest 32
    to shout up the stairs, ‘Mum, I’m home,’ before slamming the door behind her. Chantal was a real door-banger, it used to drive Michelle mad that she could never do anything quietly – now she’d give anything to hear the glass in the front door rattle in its frame, just as she’d like to hear her daughter playing her records too loud, especially ‘Save All Your Kisses for Me’ by the Brotherhood of Man.
    Michelle must have heard it a thousand times, usually with Chantal singing along tunelessly, shuffling about and mimicking the famous dance routine, but now all was silence behind her bedroom door.
    Michelle had not been able to face going into that room since her daughter’s mutilated body had been found in the alley behind the Bingo hall. There were still empty mugs and crisp packets on the floor from where Chantal had invited her mates round the day before her murder. Her baby had been so popular.
    She was such a good-looking kid. All the boys had loved her and all the girls wanted to be her mate.
    Their newly acquired phone would ring constantly and Michelle had loved to see that Chantal was so well liked.
    Her possessions were littered around the flat as if she were still there to use them; her slippers kicked off in the bathroom, combs and brushes and beads on the kitchen table where she had been braiding her sisters’ hair. In the kitchen, on top of the counter stood a pile of overdue library books that Chantal 33
    had been due to take back the day she was killed, and hanging over the back of a chair was a skirt of hers which needed hemming. Michelle wasn’t ready to clear any of these reminders away, but ready or not the time had come to say goodbye formally to her first-born. In less than two hours she would be sitting in the front pew of Christ Church, Spitalfields, looking at