Dana pauses before looking down. ‘They gave me a drink with something in it, it knocks you out and then when you wake up it’s hard to focus. There were three men who escorted me onto the boat, they said they had my papers, and then at some point they dropped me off with Gordana.

‘There was another girl there.’ Her eyes move up to mine, slowly. ‘Her name was Eva. She was a Gorani but she spoke a little English, we talked a bit. She was nice. She said she was going to stay with her sister. Then we fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone.’

Her words hold me in my seat.

After a moment there is a beep and I see Madeleine make a face as she looks down at her phone.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, standing. ‘That’s the person I’m due to meet. I have to go. Isobel, a pleasure to meet you. Maureen assures me that this is all off the record.’

I nod, resenting her attempt at control, but say nothing, and Madeleine smiles, turning to Dana. ‘We’ll speak soon, OK? Thank you, Maureen. No, no, you stay there, I’ll let myself out.’

Once the sound of the clacking of heels followed by the front door closing fades, I hesitate for a moment before speaking again, not daring to meet Maureen’s eye, grateful that the NCA woman has already left. ‘OK. This Gordana woman, do you have an address?’

Chapter 53

Gabriela

The day Sadie was born, Gabriela had felt like she had been catapulted down a long, twisted, sealed slide and spat out into a world that was bright and dazzling and fraught with danger. It was like being led by the hand into a magical garden, and then struck over the back of the head with a lead pipe.

She had been so prepared for the birth. The antenatal ward at the Whittington Hospital, the air thick with disinfectant, the same corridors of the same hospital she had walked down when Valentina first got sick, turning right towards the oncology unit where the doctors talked about ‘streamlined integrated pathways’ and ‘patient empowerment’ before pausing for breath long enough to hear her mother ask, ‘How long until I die?’

Not long after she told Tom she was pregnant, he had returned home one evening with a book the size of a bible, which promised to tell them everything they needed to know in preparation for the birth of their baby. And it did, right up until the point when the child arrived, a tiny screaming human dependent on them and them only: the moment at which any plans Gabriela might have had fell apart.