My parents told me to empty my farmhouse for their forty anniversary guests. I said my daughter was eleven days out of a bone-marrow transplant. Mum said: “Lock her upstairs.” I agreed — and on Saturday the sheriff was waiting at my gate.

catering van, a florist’s van, and a string quartet in a people carrier.

Standing beside my locked gate, where he had been since twenty past eight, was Sheriff Doss.

I had rung the department on the Thursday, and a woman had taken it very seriously and asked me three questions about the deed and one about my daughter, and then she had said somebody would be there.

I watched from the living room window.

Nessa was resting in the clean room behind me. Eleven days home. Her consultant had been extremely clear with us, twice, about what an ordinary infection could do to her body now.

My mother got out of the Cadillac in an ivory dress and walked straight to the gate.

Sylvana Haye is sixty-six and has never once, in my hearing, raised her voice above the level of a woman ordering in a restaurant.

She said: why