‘You can lie all you want,’ Claire said. ‘But if you’ve come here trying to get me to dish up gossip about Annie, you might as well leave. Because hell will freeze over before I tell you anything about her.’

‘Annie’s mother looked you up on the internet,’ Claire went on. ‘She found lots of Dee Morrisons, but none of them were you. But she also found a journalist called Dee Doran who’d been married to someone called Billy Morrison. That’s you, isn’t it?’

Dee recognised a brick wall when she hit one. Leaving the gallery, she used her knowledge of the area to walk from Deancross Street through Shadwell into Wapping.

She didn’t know what she’d expected when she got to Annie’s house. Maybe that Annie would refuse to open the door, or that there’d be no one at home and Dee would have to wait. But when she rang the doorbell, she hardly had to wait at all. The door was opened by a man in his thirties. Tall and thin with dark curly hair, heavy-framed glasses and a goatee beard, he looked like a typical east London hipster. Which possibly explained Dee’s instant aversion to him, before he even opened his mouth.

‘Can I help you?’ he asked, looking expectantly at Dee.

‘I’m looking for Annie,’ Dee said.

‘Who?’

‘Annie Holden. She lives here.’

The man frowned.

‘Annie? Sorry. You must have got the wrong house.’

‘Bullshit,’ Dee said. ‘I was here yesterday in this very house talking to Annie’s mother.’

‘Hold on a second.’ He held up a hand, and Dee had to fight an urge not to slap it back down. ‘You’re telling me you were here in this house yesterday?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. I was here all day yesterday. I work from home, you see. If there was anyone else in the house, I think I might have known about it.’

He had a strong Yorkshire accent. Vaguely, Dee remembered reading somewhere that people found northern accents more trustworthy than southern ones. Maybe so, but right now this guy was bullshitting her. Because Dee knew she wasn’t losing her mind, which was the only other explanation for what was happening right now.

‘These houses all look pretty much the same along here,’ Hipster Bloke said. ‘I’m sure if you try some of the others, you’ll find the person you’re looking for.’

‘No. This is the house. I’m sure of it.’

Even as she said this, she was stepping back to take another look at the house, just in case she’d got it wrong. But everything was the same – the red front door; the stained glass panels in the front window; the purple flowers in the window boxes. This was the same house.