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‘When did you first join the church?’ asked Robin.
‘Ninety… three,’ she said. ‘I think. Yeah, ninety-three.’
‘What made you join?’
‘I wen’ along to a meetin’. In London.’
‘What attracted you to the UHC?’ asked Strike.
‘Nothin’,’ said Carrie baldly. ‘The buildin’ wuz warm, tha’s all. I’d run off… run away from home. I wuz sleepin’ in a hostel… I didn’t get on with my mum. She drank. She had a new boyfriend and… yeah.’
‘How soon after that meeting did you go to Chapman Farm?’ asked Strike.
‘I wen’ right after the meetin’ finished… they had a minibus outside.’
Her hands were clutching each other, the knuckles white. There was a henna tattoo drawn onto the back of one of them, doubtless done in Spain. Perhaps, Robin thought, her small daughters had also had flowers and curlicues drawn onto their hands.
‘What did you think of Chapman Farm, when you got there?’ asked Strike.
There was a long pause.
‘Well, it wuz… weird, wuzn’ it?’
‘Weird?’
‘Yeah… I liked some of it though. I liked bein’ with the kids.’
‘They liked you, too,’ said Robin. ‘I’ve heard some very nice things about you from a woman called Emily. She’d have been around seven or eight when you knew her. D’you remember her? Emily Pirbright?’
‘Emily?’ said Carrie distractedly. ‘Um – maybe. I’m not sure.’
‘She had a sister, Becca.’
‘Oh… yeah,’ said Carrie. ‘Have you – where’s Becca, now?’
‘Still in the church,’ said Robin. ‘Both sisters are. Emily told me she really loved you – that both of them did. She said all the kids felt that way about you.’
Carrie’s mouth made a tragi-comic downwards arc and she began to cry, noisily.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ said Robin hastily, as Carrie bent down to the shopper at her feet and extracted a packet of tissues from its interior. She mopped her eyes and blew her nose, saying through her sobs,
‘Sorry, sorry…’
‘No problem,’ said Strike. ‘We understand this must be difficult.’
‘Can I get you anything, Carrie?’ said Robin. ‘A glass of water?’
‘Y–y–yes please,’ wept Carrie.
Robin left the room for the kitchen, which lay off the dining area. Strike let Carrie cry without offering words of comfort. He judged her distress to be genuine, but it would set a bad precedent to make her think tears were the way to soften up her interviewers.
Robin, who was filling a glass with tap water in the small but spotless kitchen, noticed Carrie’s daughters’ paintings on the fridge door, all of which were signed either Poppy or Daisy. One was captioned Me and Mummy and showed two blonde figures hand in hand, both wearing princess dresses and crowns.
‘Thank you,’ whispered Carrie when Robin returned to the sitting room and handed her the glass. She took a sip, then looked up at Strike again.
‘OK to continue?’ he asked formally. Carrie nodded, her eyes now reddened and swollen, the mascara washed away onto her cheeks, leaving them grey. Strike thought she looked like a piglet, but Robin was reminded of the teenaged girls keeping vigil before the Manifestation of the Drowned Prophet.
‘So you met Daiyu for the first time at the farm?’ asked Strike.
