‘I just, I wondered if it would be a good idea to …’ Mum took a sharp, pregnant breath, and Sal knew what was coming a second before it happened. As with Meghan, the anticipation – the unsaid, the tiptoed-around – was more infuriating almost than the actuality. Could nobody in this world, Sal asked herself, just come out and say what they were thinking? Did she have to be Derren Brown all day long? ‘I just wondered whether you’d got in touch with Michaela.’

Sal held the phone away from her mouth for a few seconds, because the sigh this time would otherwise, she felt, have carried it away like a tidal wave.

‘Yes. I’m still here. But no, Mum, I have not got in touch with her, because she is literally the number one reason why this is happening, for a start …’

‘I know, I know you two had your … your feud.’ (Feud, thought Sally despairingly; am I talking to Shakespeare here?) ‘But still, she might be in touch with him, mightn’t she? She might have seen—’

‘She’s in Germany,’ said Sal, ‘and if she’s had the message I’m sure she’ll deal with it. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by me calling her. I’m going to hang up in a second and I promise you we will find him. All right?’

‘Of course,’ said Jean, ‘of course, yes. I mean, do whatever you think, Sally. Just please – let me know. Please keep talking to me.’

Sal felt her throat constrict as she ended the conversation. She brought up Steffi’s message, read it, clicked through to the link it contained. ‘Steffi.’ This girl, whoever she was, James’s flatmate – someone Sal had never heard of – had more chance of helping him, or thought she did, than James’s own sister. Sal was indignant for a second at the presumption. How old was the girl? Barely twenty-five, to look at her. How long had she even known James? Then, as she waited at the Swan Street Bridge for the lights to change, the sun still glaring down indifferently, that indignation inverted itself, and Sal accepted she was really angry at herself, for somehow letting it get to this.