The realisation that her fear has changed shape sends a wave of heat through her body and makes her eyes burn. Until just a few days ago, the thought of all the things that could go wrong had made her consider not having the baby. Now, the same thoughts make her send up a prayer to a god she doesn’t even believe in.

She quickly gets up and fetches her handbag from the bench in the hallway, pulls out the ziplock bag and puts it down on the kitchen sink.

‘I’m going to go through Billy’s phone,’ she announces, rips off a sheet of kitchen roll, dampens it with a few drops of water from the tap, and wipes down the mobile. Watches it go brown with dried blood.

‘I assume it’s the one he got from work,’ Karen continues with her back to Leo. ‘At least it’s an iPhone,’ she adds and glances over at her own charger lying next to the bread tin.

Leo winces when he realises what it is she’s wiping off.

‘Did you ask Kore for the PIN?’ he says. ‘We’re not likely to get it working without it.’

‘I did. Kore picked the same PIN he uses for his own phone. Apparently, he wanted to be able to get into it because it belongs to KGB and was full of pictures of . . . from the recording sessions. But Billy might have changed it. If he did, I’ll have to take it in to forensics tomorrow.’

She opens the cupboard under the sink and bins the kitchen roll, then inspects the phone before plugging it in. I’ll deal with that later, she thinks with a glance at the even stickier wallet while she waits for the white apple to appear on the screen.

‘I wonder if he’d met someone,’ Leo says.

She turns around.

‘Billy? What makes you think that? Did he say something?’

‘No, and I didn’t ask. It was just a feeling I had. Like he was a bit . . .’

‘What?’

Leo shrugs.

‘I don’t know. Probably just my imagination. But I do remember thinking he’d seemed a bit unlike himself recently. Absent, you know, as though his mind were elsewhere. Even when Luna was around. And I think he felt really guilty when she went missing. He seemed devastated.’

‘All right, but she came ba—’

Karen is interrupted by a ding and turns away again. Looks at the four dashes and the instruction to type in the PIN code.

2107, Kore’s birthday. How fucking original, she thinks and types in the numbers. Then she calls out:

‘Bingo!’

*

A few minutes later, hope fades. If Billy Formby has relatives, a boyfriend, or even friends, he didn’t contact them on this phone. She and Leo stand next to each other with their elbows on the kitchen counter, combing through Billy’s phone for personal contacts.