Robin turned to Steve Baker’s page in her book with a sinking feeling. Steve Baker – for crying out loud. To torment herself, she typed the name into Facebook and scrolled through screen after screen after screen of hits. This time she didn’t even have a photograph. Without much hope, she Googled the name and the first line of the address she’d got from Companies House. To her frank astonishment, up came a link to a Facebook page dedicated to campaigning Birmingham City Council for a pedestrian crossing. Baker and his wife, Frances, were tagged in a photograph showing a petition with pages of signatures. From what Robin could tell, the son of a family friend, a teenager, had been hit by a car while crossing their road.

She clicked through to Baker’s own page. He was younger than the three who’d been pictured in the Post, not much older than her, probably – yes, born 1979 said his profile. KES then Durham for university, and now he was a property lawyer. She scrolled down through pictures of him, Frances and their two young daughters at Christmas and in Halloween costumes, on a beach holiday in Corsica. Below those was a large group photograph, a crowd of men in suits all looking up towards the camera, congregants before a pulpit. Class of ’97 reunion!

Robin stopped. Josh had gone to KES. He’d been three academic years ahead of her and Corinna, and they’d left Camp Hill in 2000. And he’d been to a reunion last summer; she remembered the story of the hangover.

She double-clicked on the photograph, enlarging it to fill most of the screen. Baker was in the second row and then – yes. There he was. Middle left, turning to talk to his neighbour just as the shot had been taken: Josh. Robin sat back in her chair.

They must have known each other. There were, what, seventy or eighty men in the photo? KES wasn’t enormous – if they’d been there together, in the same year, at the very least they’d have been aware of each other. Had they been friends? She hadn’t ever met him but Josh hadn’t met all their school friends, either. She didn’t remember him talking about a Steve Baker but, again, a name so unremarkable would go in one ear and out the other. Her first impulse was to text Corinna – she actually reached for her phone. When the shock subsided, she stood and carried the laptop round the table.

Maggie peered at the screen. ‘What am I looking at?’

‘Steve Baker, just here, he’s one of the syndicate, and then here …’ She pointed.

‘Is that … Josh?’

‘KES reunion, class of ’97. Taken last year.’

‘They knew each other?’