Still, she was more than making up for it with this vigil, she thought, standing up and going over to pile coffee into the cafetière again. She didn’t drink coffee much normally; this was James’s. So was the cafetière. The amount of stuff that would need to be cleared out, or sold, or rehomed. The number of people she would need to talk to. The idea that he wouldn’t be back, that key would never rattle in the lock again, she wouldn’t hear him exhale and bend to pick up her coat and hang it on the hook.

She went over to the tap and splashed water on her cheeks. The water did its job and she pulled herself up sharply. The final mental image of James had jolted her. It was someone’s life. She hadn’t ‘more than made up for it’. If he never came back, it was partly her fault and partly her loss. It was a loss to all of them. This had been an adventure, yes, a challenge, but there was no value in that. If James was dead, it was terrible. It would haunt her. At last Steffi understood that fully. She refreshed the page and her tired eyes narrowed in concentration.

Someone in Germany had forwarded a message from someone in Egypt whose mate in London had seen a man, perhaps matching James’s description, walking into Euston station. Not King’s Cross; Euston again. This was the second mention of Euston they’d had. She’d already called the station and got a recorded message with train information; surfed the multi-choice menus in vain to try to get through to a human. She’d sent Twitter messages to the operators of all the trains that left Euston that night. She could follow those leads up again. There would be a person out there who knew where he was. If he was anywhere.

Across from the kitchen, Emil stood under the jet of water, rehearsing the next move in this long, weird game.