‘Should say I did, shouldn’t I? That would be the right thing. Only I didn’t. I had money and was told I could sort myself out, and me and Iona could have a better life too. Everyone was happy.’

‘Only you weren’t?’

‘Not really cut out for motherhood.’ She grins sadly, lowering her eyes. ‘Thought it was best for us both when Iona left me. She found out what I’d done and couldn’t bear to look at me, so I thought she was better off without me.

‘I thought she’d moved on with her life,’ Ange goes on. ‘I never expected her to return after what she knew.’

‘That’s why you never reported her missing?’

‘Never knew she was,’ Ange says bluntly, though tears are glistening in her eyes. ‘Just never even realised till the police came knocking on my door a few days ago.’ She reaches down and pulls out some little white pills from her pocket, wrapped in tissue, which she counts out with shaky fingers.

‘I really don’t think you should be doing that here,’ I say.

Ange laughs at me. ‘These ones are prescription. I have to take them or else something else might kill me off.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ I ask, eyeing the tablets.

‘You wouldn’t have heard of it. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Sounds proper posh, doesn’t it? It means …’ She starts to tell me but my mind blanks out. Suddenly I know exactly who Iona had been looking for.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Iona got the wrong person.’

I gaze at the outline of Ange’s face, the sharp chin, the short nose, and reel back. There’s something so familiar about her. I was right that it wasn’t Iona’s eyes I saw in hers; it was Jill’s.

She twists round to look at me. ‘What you talking about?’

‘She got the wrong person,’ I repeat. ‘She thought it was my sister, but it wasn’t; it was my friend Jill.’

Ange looks at me out of the corner of one bleary eye. ‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because Jill had the same condition as you. Only I don’t think her parents knew. She died when she was nineteen. The same age Iona did,’ I say, holding my hand to my mouth as the realisation sinks in.

Ange’s deep breaths sound hollow and raspy, as if she can’t quite catch them.

‘Are you okay?’ Part of me wants to take hold of her hand which is shaking in her lap. Another part recognises she’s done this to herself.

‘Fine,’ she says. ‘I’m fine. I should be getting back anyway.’

‘Wait. I know who it is, this changes everything. We can go to the police. If we tell them what happened, that we know who bought your baby, then—’ I break off, my heart thumping.