‘Hmm. We have the photo of the photo you sent, but as you can imagine, it’s better to see it in the flesh.’ He smudged his thumb across the surface. ‘It certainly feels like a real photograph.’

‘You think I’d fake it?’ Despite herself, Heather was slightly amused by the idea.

Parker glanced up. ‘You’d be surprised at the weird stuff people do, Miss Evans, especially around cases like this. Do you know where this was taken?’ Parker was frowning at the photo now, looking troubled. She had half expected him to immediately dismiss it, but he was turning it around in his hands, looking for a date that wasn’t there.

‘As best I can remember, a little summer fête somewhere outside of London.’ Parker glanced up at her. ‘I know, but you can see how old I was. Having said that,’ she tipped her head to one side slightly, trying to picture her infrequent childhood day trips; she couldn’t stop thinking about the roughly scratched shape of the heart, ‘we tended to go to Kent or Essex on days out. Southend maybe. Places like that.’

‘Fiona Graham’s family were from Manchester. What would they be doing down here?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ve heard that even northerners like to leave their icy lands occasionally.’

That got a smile. ‘All right. And this certainly looks like our girl to me.’ Parker shuffled some papers on the desk and came up with an old school photo. It was a typical such portrait, still housed in its brown cardboard frame. In it, Fiona Graham looked a couple of years older than she had been at the fête, and she was grinning widely at the camera, wild corkscrews of ginger hair framing her face. She was wearing a school uniform – dark green cardigan, shirt in light green check.

‘I’ll pass this on to Fiona’s parents, and see if they can confirm it.’ Parker put the photos down and took a sip of his coffee. ‘This is your mother in the photo? And you say that your father took it?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about that day; how her mother, normally so icy and distant, had suddenly broken down in tears, shaking and hiding her head in her hands. How her dad had herded them away from the happy picnic area, his own face oddly pale around the jowls.

‘Any idea if your parents knew Fiona Graham’s parents?’

She shrugged and picked up her own coffee. It was vile, but it was a good distraction. ‘I’ve no clue.’

‘Still, quite a coincidence, isn’t it? A connection to Reave, a connection to Fiona Graham …’