She must have had pretty low standards of being nice. All I did was shove a few tissues at her. These old-money families tended to run low in the sympathy department. ‘We’re doing our absolute utmost to find Violet,’ I said. ‘Most teenagers who go missing do turn up.’

Bex took a tissue and blew her nose again. ‘Sorry. How gross. She didn’t want to see me. I registered with that thing to get in touch. If you both register, they connect you, but she never did. Sometimes I wondered if she might be dead, but I couldn’t let myself think that. It felt like she was alive and dead at the same time, like that physics cat.’

‘She’d been told you were dead. But she did want to find her biological family.’

‘Oh my God.’ She sank lower into her chair.

‘It’s okay. It’s a huge shock for you.’

‘I saw on the news that Violet was wearing a brooch when she disappeared – a pelican?’

‘Yes. And we’ve confirmed that she had the brooch when she was a baby. She wears it on a chain around her neck all the time, and her friend told us she has a tiny tattoo of a pelican on her hip.’

Bex softened. ‘I left it with her. It’s our family crest. Did you know the thing about the mother pelican gouging out its own chest to feed its babies? The pelican image is supposed to represent parental sacrifice, so it’s a bit of a joke that it’s used for our family.’

Jai and I sat and listened. Most people don’t get listened to – not properly. Usually the other person’s just waiting for their chance to speak. So, even though we’re cops and they know in the rational part of their brain that anything they say could be used against them, the child inside is so grateful to be listened to that it’s surprising what people come out with to keep our attention.

‘Our family wouldn’t win any parenting prizes,’ Bex said, ‘as you might have worked out. My mother went back to the Ukraine when I was three, and Dad sent me away to live with my aunt in Southampton. I suppose we’re a strange lot. Not good with emotions. But Violet’s so full of life. It’s … it’s so awful that she’s missing.’

We sat quietly and gave her a moment to contemplate the child she’d never known. ‘I’ve thought about her every day,’ she said. ‘Wondered if she’s okay, what her adoptive family are like, praying she’s had a happy childhood – better than what I could have given her. Now I feel like my insides are dropping away. Plummeting down in a lift-shaft. My child. You gave her to me but then took her away.’