Page 152 of The Altar Girls

‘You think it was something that reminded her of a past trauma?’ Lottie got up from the desk and stood in front of the incident board.

‘I don’t know. I don’t understand that psychobabble, but she definitely scared the living daylights out of me when she flipped. What would make a child go from sitting contentedly watching television in silence to suddenly screaming?’

‘A lot of things. Or maybe nothing at all.’ Lottie thought of her own children growing up, and the outbursts and tantrums that erupted for no apparent reason. ‘Can you remember what ads were on?’

‘Not really. I was brain-dead from Peppa.’

‘They would have been child-related as you were watching a cartoon channel. Maybe Christmas ads?’ Why was she even pursuing this when she should be pressurising the lab about the rosary? But something about Harper’s outburst needled her. A child who had been silent and meek suddenly displaying a different side told her there was a question there to be answered.

‘Yes, you’re right. Let me think.’ He paused, tapping a finger against his chin. ‘Dolls. Yes, that’s it!’ He jumped up. ‘There was an ad for a baby doll and a little girl had it in a bath with loads of bubbles. That’s when Harper screamed. She must have a fear of baby dolls.’

‘Or a fear of water.’

‘But the muddy puddles in the Peppa Pig cartoon didn’t affect her.’

Lottie walked over to the incident board and indicated the lab report on Willow’s lung contents.

‘What if Harper hasn’t been mute for over a year? Maybe she saw something on Monday morning so horrific that it terrified her into silence.’

‘That seems like a real long shot.’

She glared at Lei. There were already too many long shots leading nowhere on the investigation. She needed proof, not television ads.

He held up a hand in apology. ‘Did her mother lie to us then?’

‘It’s all supposition at the moment.’ Lottie knew she should be running out the door to talk to Zara, to hear what the woman had to say. But the thing was, she was struggling to make sense of the timeline.

Lei voiced that concern. ‘How could this have happened on Monday morning? We have CCTV footage of Zara leaving Willow at the school. And then we see Willow walking with Naomi.’

‘Let me think.’

‘And her mother reported her missing. Naomi’s didn’t.’

‘Give me a minute.’

‘She reported her missing around lunchtime.’

‘Lei, will you stop? I’m trying to think. I need silence.’

‘Sorry. Okay. But what if we were lied to?’

She exhaled a loud sigh, her train of thought completely fractured by his incessant talking. ‘Someone lied to us, maybe they all lied to us. I just need to figure it out.’

Her eyes were drawn to the photo of the red-beaded rosary. ‘Zara makes jewellery. She may have lied about the rosary when I asked her about it. Hasn’t she a studio?’

‘It was looked at when we were searching for Willow. It’s just a shed really. She told me it’s not much, just a place to work. When she went out last evening, she said she needed to work to fill her orders and that gave her headspace to grieve for her daughter.’

Lottie recalled the rustic-looking mugs. ‘She’s dabbling in making pottery. She’d have a kiln for that, wouldn’t she?’

‘What has that to do with anything?’ Lei asked.

‘Maybe it’s where the children’s clothes and school bags were burned.’

‘Didn’t you think the undertaker burned them?’

‘I thought a lot of things over the course of this week and not all of them turned out to be right.’ She glanced at him. ‘But if Zara is involved, and it turns my stomach to even countenance such an idea, we need to search that workshop again, with SOCOs this time. If she doesn’t allow it, we then need a valid reason for a warrant. We need Harper to talk.’

‘We?’