Libby's grave

Libby’s grave is the burial place Megan Hipwell and Mac made for their infant daughter after she drowned in a bath. Dug at the edge of their property beside a disused railway line, the grave was marked with stones. Its significance lies in the contrast between that small, private marker and the years of grief, silence, and fear surrounding Libby’s death; the later discovery of her remains turns the concealed burial into part of the police investigation connected to Megan’s own death.

Identity and Burial

Libby, whose name Megan tells Kamal Abdic was Elizabeth, was only a few months old when she died. Megan recalls that she had given birth at home, without having attended scans, and that Libby had seemed healthy and easy to care for. That remembered beginning makes the grave the endpoint of a brief life Megan describes with tenderness: she remembers her daughter’s dark eyes and blonde hair, and how good she had seemed from the start.

The accident happened during a period of cold, stormy weather, after Mac had left the house following an argument. The roof leaked into buckets in the kitchen; Megan, exhausted and drinking in an effort to get warm, took Libby into the bath and held her against her chest. Megan says she fell asleep. When she woke, Libby was no longer on her chest but wedged between her arm and the side of the tub, with her face in the water. The grave therefore records not a planned separation but the irreversible consequence of a moment Megan could not fully explain or undo.

The Burial and Its Silence

After Mac came home and found Megan sitting on the bathroom floor with Libby in her arms, Megan ran out into the rain. She remembers reaching the beach and later being in the dunes, afraid even to go into the water. Mac eventually brought her home. The next morning, Megan wrapped Libby in a sheet while Mac dug the grave at the edge of the property, near the disused railway line. They placed stones over it as a marker.

Megan recalls no conversation between them during the burial, and says they did not look at each other. The stones gave the grave a visible, physical form, but the silence around it left the event unspoken between the two people who had buried Libby. That silence continued after the burial: Mac went out that night, saying he had to meet someone, and never came back. Megan was left alone with the memory of the house, the death, and the grave.

A Memory Recounted

The grave returns to the narrative through Megan’s account to Kamal, not through a present-day visit to the burial site. As she speaks, she remembers the bathroom in sharply physical details: the candle going out, the cold, the storm shaking the house, and the light Mac switched on when he found her. Her recollection makes the grave inseparable from the moments before and after it: Libby’s body in the bath, the flight into the rain, and the sheet and stones used the following morning.

Telling Kamal her daughter’s name is part of making the loss speakable. He listens without recoiling and takes Megan’s hand; she feels safe enough to continue. But the confession does not dissolve the memory. Megan says that at night she still feels alone in the house and imagines hearing Libby cry or smelling her skin. The grave thus remains more than a place of burial in Megan’s recollection: it is bound to the guilt and fear that have persisted since the death.

Discovery and Consequences

The burial becomes public when human remains are found in the garden of a farmhouse near Holkham, in north Norfolk. A newspaper report says police opened an investigation into the death of a child after receiving a tip about a possible unlawful killing during their investigation into Megan Hipwell’s death. Megan reads that the remains had been buried near the East Anglian coast and recognizes the discovery as the finding of Libby.

The news changes the status of the grave from a secret place remembered by Megan into physical evidence in an investigation. The account establishes the broad connection between the burial and the discovery, while the report places the child’s death within the wider inquiry into Megan’s murder. Megan phones Scott Hipwell to say she is sorry; after he does not answer, he returns her call later. The grave’s stones had once marked a private burial. The discovery of the remains makes that buried history visible to others, with consequences reaching beyond Megan’s long-held grief.