What can I tell Flora when she asks me what her mother was like? I am ashamed at how little I knew about Chloe. The night she stayed at Stanley Crescent, I heard a noise and went in to check on her. It was just dawn and the curtains had been left open so the light streamed through the window. She lay asleep, the blankets tossed off her and her hand flung above her head. She looked, I thought, like some fallen huntress from Greek mythology, with her long slender limbs and almost translucent skin. A wild and unearthly creature temporarily taking shelter in my house. Gathering strength to go back out into a world that, she may fear, only had harm in store for her.

I wanted to keep Flora, I told the young social worker on the telephone, my voice lowered, so that Nicholas wouldn’t hear me. We had settled in well together and I wanted to keep her with me. To adopt her. These grandparents had never even met her; it would be too much of an upheaval for her to be handed over to strangers.

There was a long silence. ‘Well, we thought it was just going to be a temporary placement with you,’ said the social worker. ‘And the grandparents have a big place in Surrey. We’ve already done all their assessments and police checks and everything. It’s the long term we think about when we decide on placements.’

In the end we agreed that I would come to London the following week so we could meet to discuss it. We would figure it all out, the social worker said, as if there were an easy solution to every problem, a neat answer to everything. She agreed to give me Chloe’s parents’ details; I wanted to send them a photograph of Flora, I told her.

After I hung up, I called the number I’d been given. A young woman answered the telephone and sung out ‘Tate residence’. She would fetch Mrs Tate, she said.

When Mrs Tate came to the phone she did not sound particularly surprised to hear from me. I offered her my condolences about Chloe’s death and she thanked me. She told me to call her Eva.

Flora was doing well, I told her. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘We didn’t even know there was a Flora until last week, so it’s all a bit of a shock, really. Andrew’s in a state. Just Chloe’s style, though; always surprising us.’

There was a long silence after that. I wanted to come and see them, I said, as soon as possible. Eva sounded somewhat alarmed at this.

‘They told us she wouldn’t be coming for at least a week. We’re not ready. I have to go to London next week.’

‘I won’t bring Flora. I just want to talk to you.’

Eva agreed I could come.