Eventually – and it took a while – Amelia wore herself out and joined us. She was red in the face with exertion. Her hair dripped on the stone floor. She didn’t bother drying it, just wrapped her towel around her middle and slumped into a seat next to Xander, who went on ‘reading’ for an awful long time without turning a page.

‘Good book?’ I asked him when the quiet – which had a wrong feeling about it – had gone on too long.

‘Riveting.’

The silence between us descended again, punctuated by a bit of traffic noise which filtered in over the hotel’s high walls.

‘I’m going to order some food,’ Amelia said.

‘I’m not hungry,’ I replied.

‘Me neither,’ said Xander without looking up.

‘Nor am I,’ said Amelia. ‘But we can’t live on air. Waiting on an empty stomach is worse than just waiting: fact. I’ll order.’

She called over a waitress who can’t have been much older than us. There were bright beads at the end of her cornrows and her fingernails were all painted a different colour, which you’d think might mean she was a playful person, but as Amelia established that the hotel served cheeseburgers and ordered three, clarifying that they weren’t all for her, the girl’s face stayed absolutely set, as if it was carved from marble. None of us said anything after she left, and we sat in that heavy silence for the fifteen or so minutes it took for her to bring us our order, which she set down solemnly on the glass tabletop, her face as expressionless as before. Even the cheeseburgers looked leaden in that atmosphere. None of us made a move towards them after the waitress had gone.

‘Who’s going to say it?’ said Xander.

‘Say what?’

‘Not you evidently, Jack. That’s understandable.’

Not knowing what he meant, I turned to Amelia.

‘I’m always saying the wrong thing these days,’ she said. ‘So not me.’

‘What are you guys talking about?’

Xander took a deep breath. ‘You obviously bought into that little stunt of your uncle’s.’

‘Stunt?’

‘Him finding a tame policeman who’d pretend to take you seriously.’

‘He did take me seriously!’

‘You’d want to believe that,’ said Amelia. ‘Wish fulfilment is a thing.’

‘He did enough to make you agree to park yourself here and wait it out. I’ll give him that,’ said Xander.

Amelia cut back in. ‘You have to admit his plan of action – spread some photos about among his policeman mates and hope – sounded pretty weak.’

‘Precisely,’ said Xander. ‘The first thing he should have done, if he wasn’t in Langdon’s pocket, is interview him properly, since your uncle is pretty much the last person to have seen your parents before they disappeared.’