She turned on her heel and left the room swiftly, ignoring his protest that he knew the truth about people and that Cassie had probably brought her death on herself.

Going into the kitchen, Molly paused for a moment to take a deep breath.

The kitchen was a large, pleasant room, the walls lined with glass-fronted cupboards which her mother kept immaculately, with her best glass and china on display. On the central, scrubbed-top table was the special cake Mary had made for today. She’d put a model of the Coronation coach on to the white icing but it had sunk to halfway up its wheels because the icing was too soft. Molly had noticed some plates of vol-au-vents, cheese straws and other food on the sideboard in the living room; the cake must have been intended to be the centrepiece. But as no one had cut into it she guessed that her father had been so scathing about it that her mother had brought it into the kitchen to hide it from any visitors.

Aware that she’d eaten virtually nothing all day, Molly cut a slice of it. Like all her mother’s cakes, it was perfection, a soft and moist fruit cake, and very delicious. Molly stood for a moment or two eating it, thinking about how many people in the village really liked Mary Heywood. Before her nerves got the better of her, she had been involved in everything from singing in the choir to being a leading light in the Mothers’ Union. Jack had no real friends, only people who toadied around him because he owned a shop and was on the parish council and therefore a useful person to keep in with. Some of them must have been around this afternoon, and it was likely that’s how he’d heard about Cassie.

Molly was just putting the kettle on for some tea when her mother came out of the living room, shutting the door carefully behind her.

‘I’m so sorry about your friend,’ she said once she was in the kitchen. She held out her arms to her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, too, that your father had to be so nasty about it.’

Molly allowed herself to be drawn into a tight embrace, remembering that, just before Emily left for London, she’d remarked that it was shocking that their mother couldn’t even hug or cuddle them in their father’s presence. As she pointed out, a man who resented his own daughters being shown affection was worryingly strange.

‘Oh, Dad’s just a grumpus,’ Molly said lightly, because she knew her mother’s nerves got worse when she thought her youngest had been hurt by him. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t really mean to be that way. I’m really tired now, so I’m going to bed. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘You’re such a good girl,’ Mary said, holding her daughter tighter still. Her voice sounded as if she was about to cry. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you went off like Emily did. I know it’s no life for you here.’

‘How could I leave you?’ Molly replied, forcing herself to laugh, as if she’d never even considered leaving home.

‘Go and get into bed,’ her mother said. ‘I see you’ve had some cake, but I’ll bring you some tea in and you can tell me all about what happened earlier. John and Sonia Burridge called round and told us you’d found Cassie dead and were in the police station giving a statement. They heard it from Brenda Percy. Then Mrs Pratt rang and said you’d gone into the pub to try to get a search party together. Your father scoffed, of course, but I thought it was very commendable of you. Poor little Petal, I do hope she will be found.’

Molly went into her bedroom then, got undressed and into her nightdress, and she was just getting into bed when her mother came in.

She sat on the end of the bed, and Molly related the whole story, excluding only what she’d told the police about the men in Cassie’s life. She knew that would offend her mother.

‘Cassie was murdered,’ she said once she’d finished. ‘My first thought was that it was an accident, but I soon realized she wouldn’t have fallen backwards onto the hearth, she’d have gone face down. Besides, if Petal had seen her fall, she would have run and got help, wouldn’t she?’

‘Yes, I suppose she would,’ Mary said thoughtfully.

‘So it stands to reason that whoever killed Cassie took Petal so she couldn’t identify him.’

Mary moved closer to her and took one of Molly’s hands in hers. ‘Your dad believes Cassie was selling herself and she upset one of her customers.’

‘Trust him to think of something like that,’ Molly said indignantly, pushing her mother’s hands away, irritated that she might be inclined to believe her husband’s theory rather than thinking for herself. ‘People are so narrow-minded and stupid, especially Dad. Just because she was an unmarried mother and was a bit unconventional doesn’t mean she had to be a criminal or a prostitute. She was a good mother to Petal; she taught her to read even before she started school. I’ve never known such a happy child.’

‘From what I saw of her, I’d agree totally,’ Mary said, twisting her hands together, as she always did when she was agitated.

Molly relented and took hold of her mother’s hands to stop her. ‘There’s nothing for you to worry about, Mum,’ she said. ‘But I’m going out on the search first thing tomorrow, so Dad can bloody well take care of the shop.’

‘Don’t swear, dear! And he wasn’t always this way,’ Mary said in a small voice, a tear rolling down her cheek. ‘He was never the same after he was attacked.’

Molly had heard the story a hundred times of how her father was hit over the head with an iron bar and robbed. She was only four in 1930, when it happened. Her father had been on his way to the bank with the week’s takings from the furniture shop he managed in Bristol. He was badly hurt, needing a great many stitches in his head, but it was still rumoured that he was in league with the thief. This was later proved to be untrue, when the police caught the culprit, but by then Jack had been fired from his job and his reputation was in the gutter.

‘We had such a hard time for over a year,’ Mary said. ‘He was in pain from his injury, he couldn’t get another job, our landlord threw us out because we couldn’t pay the rent. We’d have ended up in the workhouse if Jack hadn’t managed to get a job on a farm out here, with a little cottage for us all to live in. I know you and Emily enjoyed it at the farm, but for me and your father it was like slavery. He worked from four in the morning till late at night, back-breaking work it was, too. I had to help him milk and muck out the cows, along with caring for you and Emily.’

‘Yes, I know all that, and it must have been awful for you,’ Molly said impatiently. ‘But Dad got a public apology from Dawson’s, the furniture-shop people, didn’t he? And they compensated him, too; they gave him enough to get this shop.’

‘But you don’t understand how much he suffered, and I did, too. That takes a lot of getting over,’ her mother said, her eyes welling up with emotion.

‘It was twenty years ago, Mum! High time he stopped wittering on about it and realized he was lucky, just as he was lucky being turned down when he went to enlist in the First War. That’s another thing he goes on about as if he’d been deprived. What man in their right mind would resent missing out on that?’

‘He said he hated the way people looked at him because he wasn’t in uniform.’

Molly shook her head in disbelief. ‘He’d have preferred to lose an arm or leg, or be blinded, then? Though I suppose that would have given him something worthwhile to moan about. But, getting back to the attack: if it hadn’t been for that, he would never have got a business of his own. So why should he still be angry and take it out on us?’

Mary hung her head. ‘I think it changed him mentally, and I haven’t been much of a wife to him in the last few years. That doesn’t help.’

Anger welled up inside Molly. ‘I’d say he was the one who caused your problems,’ she said sharply. ‘If only you’d stood up to him years ago, he might not be ruining all our lives now.’