‘Make me feel less like I’m eight years old.’ Robin huffed. ‘Sorry. I don’t want to drag you into this. But I need to work, that’s what she doesn’t understand. What am I going to do otherwise, sit around there trying to cry?’ Wondering if the past had caught up with them.

Maggie took a breath, as if she were about to say something, then stopped. A moment later, ‘Anything new since yesterday?’

‘No.’

‘It was on the radio on the way over. Heart, just local. Same thing, looking for Josh, nothing we don’t already know.’ She reached for the radio. ‘Want to see if we can catch it again?’

As Robin shook her head, her phone buzzed in her pocket, a text. Gid? Eight o’clock, a few minutes after – he could just have come on shift. A small leap of hope: perhaps there’d been movement on Hinton. But no, when she took out the phone, the screen said ‘Adrian’. It was mildly startling, the name already an anachronism.

Len just told me about Corinna. Devastated for you. Here if you need me. A

For god’s sake. She couldn’t stop them being in touch – she didn’t want to, they loved each other, and it was good for Len to have a male figure in her life – but of course it meant Adrian would hear about everything that happened to them. Was he going to use this to reopen communication, even try to make her reconsider? She’d thought at least that was over and done with. She locked the phone and put it back in her pocket – she’d deal with it later.

‘Where are we going?’ she said.

‘Val Woodson’s, via coffee. I can’t be messing with that Nescafé this morning.’

‘You’ve taken her on?’

‘I’ve told her we’ll see what we can do, yeah. She’s desperate and I want to help her.’ Another pause. ‘I also thought it would be good for you.’

‘Me?’

‘It’s what you need now, isn’t it? Something to get your teeth into – something where you can actually use your skills.’ She glanced over. ‘It’s going to be very hard for you, being on the outside while this is going on. I thought this would give you another focus, something else to think about.’

‘Thank you,’ Robin said.

She watched Stratford Road slide past outside the window, One-Hour Photo and the Kerala Ayurvedic spa, a place offering cash for gold. Outside UK Furniture Clearance, a ragtag assortment of wooden cots, bedframes and awkward-looking cabinets metastasized on the pavement. She concentrated, focusing on details, looking for something she could throw a line around. If anything, the unreality was stronger this morning, the lack of sleep compounding the sense that what had been concrete was now wily, unreliable. Malign. The world had spun away – she was out on her own, free-falling.