‘That’s right,’ Steffi confirmed for the third time. ‘He does live here, but no, he definitely isn’t here now.’ Talking to old people – anyone over roughly thirty-five – was so tiring. They returned to the same questions again and again. Still, to be fair to the woman, she was James’s mother. If Steffi had a child, and if the kid’s life was in danger, she supposed she’d be pretty frantic. Although frantic wasn’t really the word for how Jean was talking: it was more a sort of controlled panic. There was a terrible plea in her voice for someone to take her in hand and tell her that this would be sorted out, it would all go away; and at the same time, so British, there was a sort of muttering apology at the very idea that she needed this, had to ask it of people she didn’t know.

‘So no, I don’t think – I don’t think it is worth for you to come here,’ Steffi said. ‘I think just stay by the phone and we will … yes, of course we will. As soon as … yes. Of course, Jean. We have a lot of people looking, now – a lot.’

Emil squeezed Steffi’s shoulder as she put the phone down on the table and made her now mechanical check of the screen. It was so bony and tense. Emil’s fingers made a few circuits of the ball of her shoulder, crept across her clavicle. Steffi sighed under her breath, but it wasn’t obvious whether it was in appreciation or impatience. Emil had a mate in Bilbao who was an apprentice masseur and once a client had sighed non-stop for the hour in what seemed like beatific release, but it turned out she was angry about the music he’d put on, and she asked for a refund and he was sacked.

‘This is nice?’ he said at last, and the way it came out, it sounded as if he was trying to reassure himself as much as ask her opinion.

‘Sure, yes, it’s nice. Thank you.’ She said it with warmth, but not with total conviction; it was almost as if she was humouring him. Emil wished he knew anything about massage. He’d had the option of a summer course once, but he went for circus skills instead. What a shit call that had been. How many girls were you going to get into bed by juggling?