‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered.

She had half risen in her seat, but his tone of command was so final that she had no choice but to fall back.

‘Are you really running away from the police?’ Liza asked her. ‘How exciting!’

Her father closed his eyes.

‘Is it too much to hope that you’ll remember I am a judge?’ he asked.

‘Oh, but that doesn’t matter, Poppa,’ the child said blithely. ‘Holly needs our help.’

‘Liza-’

The child scrambled painfully out of her seat and stood in front of him, taking his outstretched hand for support and regarding him with a challenging look.

‘She’s my friend, Poppa.’

‘Your friend? And you’ve known her for how long?’

‘Ten minutes.’

‘Well, then-’

‘But who cares?’ Liza demanded earnestly. ‘It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known someone. You used to say that.’

‘I don’t think I actually said-’

‘You did, you did.’ Liza’s voice rose as she began to be upset. ‘You said, with some people you knew at once that they were going to be terribly important to you. You and Mamma-’

Without warning she burst into tears, drowning out the rest of her words.

Holly waited for him to reach out and hug his child, but something seemed to have happened to him. His face had acquired a grey tinge and was suddenly set in forbidding lines, as though the mention of his dead wife had murdered something inside him. It was like watching a man being turned into a tombstone.

Liza’s tears had turned into violent sobs, yet still he did not embrace her. Unable to bear it any longer, Holly scooped her up so that the little girl was sitting in her lap, her face buried against her.

At that moment the door of the compartment slid back. Holly drew in a sharp breath as the full horror of her position crashed over her. The police were coming in. And she was in the hands of a judge. Now there was no hope.