The woman had covered her head with a paisley scarf for the service but she pushed it backwards as Robin approached, letting it fall around her neck like a scout’s neckerchief, knotted under her chin. Both she and her boyfriend had mid-brown hair and pale eyes, his behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. He stepped forward slightly as Robin approached.

‘Sorry to bother you.’ She addressed both of them. ‘I wondered if you could help me?’

‘If we can,’ said the girl in a Brummie accent.

Robin took the photograph out of her pocket. ‘I’m looking for the woman second from the left, with the blonde hair. Her name’s Ana – do you know her?’

The guy shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Can I?’ The woman took the picture from her, angled it to the light.

‘I was told she worships here sometimes,’ Robin said.

‘She’s Serbian?’ The woman looked again. ‘Yes, I’ve seen her but only a couple of times. But yeah, she’s definitely been here.’

‘Have you ever spoken to her?’

A head-shake. ‘No.’

‘Is there anyone here you think might know her?’ Robin gestured back towards the rapidly shrinking group in the yard. There were only seven or eight people left, most of them elderly and slow-moving.

‘I don’t know. You could ask.’ She handed the picture back.

‘I will. Thanks.’

She felt their eyes on her as she strode up the drive and through the church gates. To her relief, the priest had gone inside but she saw the group tense as she approached, a small but unmistakeable tightening. One of the old men moved closer to his wife. God, did she really look that bloody scary?

She chose the guy with the shaven head who, up close, had a kind-looking face, brown eyes under an impressively cliff-like forehead that suggested either years of rugby or blackboards’ worth of equations. ‘Sorry for barging in,’ she said, addressing the group at large as much as him.

They waited.

‘I’m looking for a woman who your …’ Co-worshippers? Colleagues? ‘… friends,’ she gestured back towards the road, ‘your friends said had been here. I really need to get in touch with her. I wondered if you knew her.’

She handed the photograph to the shaven-headed man. ‘The blonde one,’ she said. ‘In the blue T-shirt. Her name’s Ana.’

He shook his head.

‘Anyone else?’

He handed the photograph to a woman in a tweed jacket who scrutinized it then said no. One by one, it went around the little group. A tiny woman who looked about eighty said in rich Brummie that she’d seen her at a liturgy in December but she hadn’t spoken to her. ‘Pretty girl,’ she said. ‘On her own.’