TPR made the gruesome discovery when we lifted the bed across to the other side of the room. Gently swinging from from the bedstead was the stiff little corpse of a fully dressed toddler. From the state of the decomposing body it was obvious that the child’s tiny hands had held their grip over the the sleigh bed’s bevelled edge for quite some time.

“We must inform the police immediately” said TPR. I agreed.

I didn’t let on that I was pretty sure that this child was the last of the brood of one of my sister’s friends, deliberately abandoned at our house three weeks earlier. Whatever would TPR think if he found out that I’d been aware of the body in the bedroom for all this time, but had done absolutely nothing about it?