‘You’re assuming it was me who wanted to keep it secret.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘You want to know why I chose Warwick for uni, half an hour away on the train? It wasn’t for proximity to my mother’s cooking, believe me.’

‘You wanted to stay close to Becca?’ said Robin.

Samir got cold feet. Dennis’s voice through the wall again, the kick in her guts even now. The humiliation – she’d never forgive Samir for that, the glorying look in Luke’s eyes when he heard.

‘You liked her all that time – what, three years?’

‘Four, my degree was.’ He shrugged. ‘The long game.’

‘But that must have been hard – you waited for years, you finally got together, and then she wanted to keep it secret.’

‘Only for a while.’

‘How long? Did she say?’

Silence.

‘How did that make you feel, Harry?’ said Maggie, softer.

‘Fine,’ he said, defiant. ‘As you said, I’d waited four years – longer, actually, I’d always liked her. Even when we were kids, I thought she was special. If she wanted to take things slowly, that was okay by me.’

‘Was it really?’ said Robin.

‘What are you implying?’ he said. ‘That I’ve got something to do with this? That this is my fault? No. I love her. And I know she loves me.’

‘I’m not implying. I’m asking how you felt about being kept a secret.’

She watched his chest rise and fall. ‘Hard as it is to believe, evidently,’ he said, voice steady, ‘I respected her decision to keep it between us until she was ready.’

‘Okay,’ said Maggie. ‘Look, we’re not suggesting you’re responsible for whatever’s going on. We’re just trying to work out if you know anything, wittingly or not, that might give us a clue what that is. We’re trying to find her, Harry.’ She reached across the table and put her hand on his. Robin thought of the car outside Valerie’s, how she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off that giant turquoise ring. Harry seemed transfixed by it, too, eyes kept down for seconds after Maggie stopped talking. When he looked up again, they were shining.

‘I feel like I’m going mad,’ he said. ‘I can’t sleep, I feel sick all the time … I keep calling her phone just in case and I hear her voicemail message and …’ He shook his head, looked down again. ‘The worst thing is, I can’t talk to anyone about it. I’m around Jas and Suze all day – fourteen, fifteen hours a day at the moment – and I can’t tell them that actually, it’s my girlfriend who’s missing.’

‘Why don’t you? Becca would understand, wouldn’t she, under the circumstances?’

‘Because if I do, I’m admitting something real’s happened.’