20
When you’re a child, you have a hierarchy of dependence. Your first port of call is your parents, closely followed by the rest of your family. In Daniel’s case, calling on his parents wasn’t possible and his family was right here in Pendleton House. This was the only family he’d ever really known. People who weren’t flesh and blood but who he ate with, lived with and grew up with. The nuns were the closest thing he’d had to parents in a long time – perhaps ever. But the looks in the eyes of the junior nuns in the early hours of that morning told him everything he needed to know.
He didn’t know who’d called the police, nor from which phone. He could tell from the Mother Superior’s face that it wasn’t her, but he didn’t know any other rooms in the building which had a telephone apart fr
