Sometimes, when Amelia is a step ahead of you, which I’ll admit is quite often, she can’t help doing this compressed smile with the left side of her mouth. She was doing it now. ‘You do know Google works here, don’t you? The man’s a travel agent, not a secret agent. I found out where his office is while you were wearing out the pool decking with your pointless pacing.’

‘Did you call him?’ I said, trying not to get my hopes up.

‘Yes, but there was no reply,’ she said. ‘I looked on Maps though and the office isn’t far away. We should check it out.’

Xander clomped back through the archway at this point. When he caught my eye he tried to look cheerful, but the words coming out of his mouth didn’t lift my spirits. ‘I got hold of Dad,’ he said, ‘and he’s really upset for you, and wants to help of course. But he thinks we should report the kidnapping to the police straight away, and I’m afraid he wasn’t optimistic about coming up with that sort of money in cash himself at such short notice. Though he’s going to try,’ he added lamely.

‘At least he didn’t spout Langdon’s never-pay-a-hostage-taker line,’ said Amelia.

‘Sure.’ Xander gave a little shrug of agreement, but I could tell from the way he avoided my eye that his father must in fact have said something pretty similar to Langdon.

The same helpless feeling I have when I’m alone at night and fall into a Mark-shaped hole swept over me. It tastes of exhaust fumes, sounds like bottles flung into a recycling truck and is as blinding as sun bouncing off windscreens. I thought of Patience crouched over her father’s body. She’d lost him. I’d lost my parents too, for now. The prospect of making do without them, as Patience would have to make do without Innocent, forever, was too frightening to consider. I shut my eyes and tried to pull myself together, grasping for the only straw I had. ‘This Mugalia guy’s office is walkable from here?’ I asked Amelia.

‘People have walked across entire continents.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I do. You mean is it close. And yes, the maps app says it’s a half-hour walk. But they’re calibrated for dawdlers. It’ll take us twenty-five minutes tops.’

‘Right then,’ I said. ‘Let’s pay the place a visit.’

39.