“So, she went from starting a new life to . . . what? Being stood up?”

“That’s what we assumed,” Fran said as she put the kettle on. “I can’t go an hour without a cuppa. You sure you don’t want one?”

“No thanks.”

Jack sat down and fell quiet while Fran pottered. Who on earth could have called Trudie if it wasn’t Jimmy? Who was the man she was so happy to be running away with? And who had hurt her so cruelly by abandoning her and her baby?

“What was the date, Aunt Fran, can you remember?”

“Oh, good God, no. Sorry, love. It was so long ago. And it was just a normal morning really. She was sat right there, where you are now, drinking tea and reading the paper. Something snapped. One minute she was OK—I mean she was upset but OK—the next minute she was out the door. I wish I could tell you more, Jack, I really do.”

Jack’s mobile buzzed in his trouser pocket. He checked it in case it was Maggie wondering where he was. It was Ridley. He watched the call go to voicemail. On his screen he had three messages: “missed call,” “new voicemail” and “breaking news” relating to some natural disaster across the other side of the world. But it prompted him to ask a question.

“What newspaper was she reading?”

Burnham-on-Sea Library was far bigger than Jack had expected it to be and even had a research section, including newspaper archives, which was exactly what he needed. He scrolled through old copies of the Daily Mail, the newspaper Fran had said Trudie was reading on the morning she left. Although Jack didn’t know the exact date, he knew the approximate time of year because he was only with Fran and Clay for ten months before he went into foster care; he knew the date he went into foster care because that information was on the paperwork he’d been given by Charlie.

Jack started by scrolling through the headlines, day by day, from July 1984 onward. When he got to August 12, 1984, the four-word headline stopped him dead. He read it again and again to make absolutely certain of what he was seeing. It was a good twenty seconds before he realized that he was holding his breath. As he started to breathe again, he read the four words one last time: HARRY RAWLINS SHOT DEAD. Was this what had upset Trudie so much? Was Harry Rawlins the man who Trudie had gone to meet, and who hadn’t shown up because he was already dead?

As Jack read the words over and over, he recalled everything he knew about Harry Rawlins. Rawlins was the one who always got away, the one who reveled in ruining Resnick’s career; he was smart, controlled and controlling, fearless and ruthless—and he was the only man the Fisher brothers had ever feared. Was Harry Rawlins the man his mum loved? Jack recalled Foxy’s text about Jimmy Nunn: No DNA match.