Just before nine Luke and Natalie arrived, Natalie carrying a tin of shortbread biscuits. ‘I made them earlier,’ she said, ‘for Ben in the office. It’s his birthday tomorrow, they’re his favourite, but I thought they might be needed here more. I can make him another batch.’ She put the tin down on the table and gave Christine a tight hug. To Robin’s discomfort, she hugged her, too, briefly.

Luke’s eyes landed on DS Thomas, on the phone to Samir in the conservatory. ‘Is that it – her? Is that all the police are giving us?’

‘She’s our contact person, keeping us updated here as far as they can,’ said Dennis. ‘They’ve got a lot of manpower out looking for Lennie, Luke – a lot – but there’s a limit to how much good they could do in our conservatory, don’t you think?’

Samir rang. The search teams were working back through Staverton’s list of known addresses again, Thomas reported – his friends, his mother’s house. What was that like? Robin thought about it in court sometimes, seeing the parents of men being tried for murder, the life sentences coming down. She’d watched their faces. What was it like to know that the child you’d breastfed, held in your arms, brought to maturity was capable of murder?

But Josh was a killer. Her friend, who’d held the child she’d breastfed in his arms, carried her in the BabyBjörn, her little feet bumping against his thighs.

‘So, nothing,’ she said.

‘Yet,’ Thomas said. ‘Nothing yet.’

Another pot of sodding tea. Robin watched hers go cold, a greasy disc of milk separating on the surface.

Mum!

She pushed her chair back.

‘Robin?’ Christine shrieked. ‘Where are you going?’

Out in the garden, she put her hands on her knees and sucked in lungful after lungful of cold air. The dew had settled, it was already starting to freeze. Was Lennie warm enough wherever she was? Where was he keeping her?

She would give anything – literally anything – if her daughter could be unharmed. Her own life, without a moment’s hesitation, she wouldn’t think about it. Lennie was her life – without her, what was the point? If anything happened to her, would she even survive? The scratchy green sofa in their old garden flat in London, the small hours of the morning. Together we can do anything. Without her, Robin thought, if she lost her, she didn’t know if she could do anything. If she’d even want to go on.