'I've kicked myself that I didn't do anything about it then. I've often thought, what if I had? Would she be alive now?' Charlotte, neighbour

'I wonder at how gullible I was... because when I asked them if I could see Samantha, just for the record, she said she was playing at the rec with her friends and I just went Oh, OK' Kaye, social worker

'You see it all the time in videos and that, but until you're in the room with them you don't really know what it means' Sharon, juror

No one in the neighbourhood has seen the Gutteridges' little girl Samantha for months. But Brendan and Sherilyn look happier than ever, so nothing is wrong. Is it?

For the Gutteridges, Samantha was just a thing that threatened to worm its way into their perfect love. For everyone else, her story is the stuff of tabloid headlines. But this time it's not in a newspaper, it's happening right next door...

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Charlotte

The baby was a dear little thing. Sherilyn had an extraordinary pram cum buggy for her — I’d never seen anything like it. It was state of the art, all aerodynamic lines and huge plastic wheels and so silent they’d be on you before you realised they were there. It was dreadfully distracting — you were so busy admiring this expensive carriage, you had to remind yourself there was a real live baby in it. Mind you, she was so quiet and still she could have been make believe, like the dolls they give little children in nativity plays in case they drop baby Jesus. I’d never subscribed to any religion, but after they found her I had this niggly question batting around in my mind: would it have made it any easier if I’d had a faith to cling on to? If I’d believed in all that nonsense, would the idea of a credible evil have helped? I didn’t think so. I’d always rather prided myself on never having slid into religious faith as insurance as I got older, so I wasn’t about to become a docile penitent, even in the face of this appalling tragedy.

Samantha was always beautifully dressed. Everything matched: coat, hat, frock, gloves, and if she was wearing lilac, the pram cover would be dark lilac, if pink, then lighter pink and so on. The planning that went into that made the Iron Lady look chaotic. One might have expected Sherilyn to be in another shade of the same colour, like a mummy ‘n’ baby matching set, but she was determinedly different, as though she’d divested herself of any association with her daughter. She often wore black in the early months: immaculate, tailored, designer black, as though she were just on the way to her important job. Or in mourning. I’m reasonably fastidious about the way I look, but she made me feel like a bag lady sometimes. I do try to make time for going to the hairdresser’s and shopping around for smart clothes, but there are other priorities, like the gardening, so I keep my nails short and practical. Hers were like talons — put me in mind of those mandarins who never cut theirs so everyone would know they were too damn important to have to do manual work — and I wondered how she managed all those tender maternal tasks with her nails that long.

I try not to be too judgemental — lord knows, a career teaching in inner city schools exposed me to wildly different lifestyles and cultures — but something didn’t fit. You can see a woman with her child and she may be wholly uneducated, but she knows how to mother. She knows how to respond to her child, how to read her child, how to gratify or deny her child but it was as if Sherilyn were playing a role in someone else’s life story. She’d be clacking down the Street in those vertiginously high heels she wore, and you’d stop her and say How’s Samantha? And she’d smile tightly and say Oh, she’s sleeping through the night now, she’s such a good baby. Or, She’s started eating solids — it’s such a relief not to have to sterilize all those bottles. But it was as if she were talking about someone she knew nothing about, regurgitating something she’d come across in a book without having digested its meaning.

And I never saw her touching the baby. Not once. She’d tweak her bedclothes or raise the hood of the babymobile when it started to rain, but she never stroked her face or patted her curls or made any of those busy loving gestures you see in new mums. Samantha was always stoppered, and when her dummy fell out Sherilyn would stick it straight back in then pull out a tissue to wipe her own fingers. Once the baby had a cold and was pouring mucus from her nose. When Sherilyn noticed, she gave an involuntary grimace. I said Poor little sausage and wiped her nose with one of my own tissues. Sherilyn’s sharp little face cracked just for an instant and she shot me a look of such gratitude I felt slightly breathless. But I couldn’t capitalise on it. With anyone else, I’d have said Come in for a coffee, you look like you could do with a sit, but her face closed down immediately. It was like when you’re looking at one of those lowering skies pregnant with rain and there’s a sudden split in the clouds, you get a momentary glimpse of some other weather beyond, then it snaps back again. You have to insist that it really happened because it’s become incredible.

She must have got pregnant shortly after they moved in and because her frame was so delicate you could pretty much tell straightaway. I’d see them going off to work together in their fancy BMW and while she’d obviously had to buy new clothes to accommodate her growing baby, the bump always looked as though it were strapped onto her like an added extra. As though it really wasn’t part of her at all. As though her body absolved itself of any responsibility for it.

I was sad when the Bennetts moved out because Lamorna was a good friend, but I thought the Gutteridges would enhance life in the Crescent; they looked as though they’d got life sorted. They painted the outside of their house as soon as they moved in, and had the front and back gardens done by professional gardeners. It was all a bit formal for my taste — I like plants to roam around and ramble into each other — but each to his own. Like the way Sherilyn dressed, it was precisely colour-co-ordinated. No room for any happy accident. I have a much admired camellia in my back garden — the soil’s limey, so my rhodies and azaleas are pretty spectacular too — and I offered them a cutting. How very kind, they said, How thoughtful, but no thank you. We decided against red in our garden. They were frightfully well-mannered, always. I’m in favour of that. Rather swam against the tide at school by insisting that the kids please’d and thank you’d alongside learning the fundaments of grammar. I was much derided. But their manners were too good, as though they weren’t there to demonstrate concern for the other person, but to repulse contact. I try not to be wise with hindsight, but Annie from number 17 remembers me saying that when I’d spoken to one or other of them, I felt like I’d been talking to an iceberg. Very beautiful, very frozen and very hidden. Very lethal, I might say now.