Was that really what had happened? After the last few weeks, it seemed too simple an explanation. Dee sat down, went back onto her laptop and scrolled through the stories she’d found about Michael Holden, trying to find out when the family had moved to Alfriston. That had to have happened after Kitty/Annie came to live with them. Alfriston was a small town, the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business. If a childless couple suddenly appeared with a daughter they’d not previously had, it would have sparked all sorts of gossip and speculation.

Dee had almost given up searching when she found it. A single sentence that confirmed everything:

Holden, former landlord of the Victoria pub in Eastbourne, had been living in Alfriston with his wife and daughter since October 1997.

The Victoria pub. The name triggered a barrage of memories from Dee’s early life. Sunday roasts in winter time. Dee and her parents gathered around one of the wooden tables by the fire. Sitting at the grand Victorian bar with her father and her ex-husband on one of their frequent visits back to Eastbourne when she was living in London. Sunny afternoons in the small beer garden at the back of the pub. Watching Ireland win the Five Nations rugby tournament in 1985, when she was sixteen. And again in 2009 after it became the Six Nations. Her father taking her to ‘the Vic’ for a drink after the break-up of Dee’s marriage; sitting beside her at a small table in the corner, his concern for her written all over his face, as he told her Billy Morrison was a fool and she was better off without him.

The Victoria had been her father’s local after he’d moved to Eastbourne in 1961. There were other decent pubs in the town, especially back then, but her father rarely drank in them. He’d never been a big drinker, but when he went out to meet friends, those encounters invariably took place inside the Victoria. It was the sort of boozer where the locals all knew each other and you could wander in on your own at any time of the day or night and know you’d find someone to have a chat with.

And in that moment, Dee realised why Fiona Holden’s face had seemed so familiar. Dee remembered Fiona and Mike from their time running the pub – a laid-back, happy couple who’d always made a point of giving Dee a treat whenever her parents took her with them to the pub.

Other memories now. Her mother, whispering to her father after Fiona had come over with a bar of Dairy Milk for ten-year-old Dee.

Such a shame they can’t have kids of their own. They’d make such lovely parents.