Patrick sat in stunned silence for a few moments after the clearly exhausted Georgia finished telling her tale. He stared at the photo on Georgia’s phone. The woman was in her late thirties, he would guess. She looked a little like Helen Philips – the same skin tone, almond eyes, Cupid’s bow lips.

‘Did she see you take her photo?’ he asked.

‘Yes. And she grabbed my phone and deleted the picture.’

‘I’m confused.’

Georgia gave him a look that made him feel very old. ‘I have my phone set to save pictures directly to the Cloud. You know, online. So there’s, like, a copy on my phone and one on the internet. That means I never lose them, and I can publish the ones I like on Facebook or whatever.’

‘That’s amazing,’ Patrick said.

The first thing he needed to do, after making sure every cop in London had this photo, was show it to the Philips family, see if they recognized this woman.

‘Why didn’t you come to us, tell us what you’d done? You could see the pain you caused Alice and Helen and Sean. How could you bear it?’

Georgia turned her face away, unable to meet his eye. ‘I couldn’t tell them what I’d done. Alice would hate me forever. Everyone would hate me. And I thought I’d go to prison.’ She rolled her head on the pillow, looked at him at last. ‘I was scared.’

Patrick shook his head.

‘Detective?’ Georgia said quietly. Patrick felt terribly sorry for her. She had done something unutterably stupid, and compounded it through selfishness and fear, but now her face was ruined. Her life would never be the same. Her life would never be as good.

‘Yes, Georgia?’

‘If you find her . . . If Frankie is alright . . . Will I be able to claim the reward?’

I’ve got my period. For years, every time it arrived I would cry with frustration and rage. I knew I could get pregnant, that there was nothing wrong with me. The doctors confirmed it. Howard’s sperm count was low-to-average, but they were there, wriggling away inside him and several times a month, without fail, wriggling inside me too. They just never did their job.

And for years – though I could never tell my husband this – I knew deep down why I never got pregnant. It was because of what I’d done. Of what had happened to me. This was my punishment. Every month the blood would arrive, reminding me of the terrible secret I forced myself to forget the rest of the time, that I blotted out with pills and dope and sunshine.

My shame. My past.

Today, though, the arrival of my period doesn’t make me sob or scream. Because now I finally have a child of my own.

Once again.