As soon as she’d come out of the attic the night before, she’d checked to see what Sean was doing. As she suspected, he was passed out on the sofa. She had stared at him like he was a stranger. Then she’d gone to the computer and sent Marion a message telling her she knew who she was.

She’d sat at the computer until the early hours, awaiting a reply, but none came. But when she’d got up this morning and checked Facebook, there it was, a reply, just a single line asking Helen to meet her here at the hotel.

She was brought out of her reverie by a strange popping sound from somewhere in the building, then sudden movement caught her eye across the lobby. The fixed door to the left of the revolving door was flung open with a bang, and two dark-suited security guards ran, fast, across the lobby, shouting into walkie-talkies. One disappeared straight up the stairs. Everyone’s heads shot up, including Helen’s. The other guard ran over to the reception desk and spoke quietly and urgently to the two receptionists, who both clapped their hands across their mouths in horror. One of them immediately got on the phone, a plump young woman in her early twenties. Helen could see her trying not to cry as she forced the words out. Helen lip-read ‘police’ and ‘gun’ and ‘Grant’s’.

A short bald man who had been standing at the reception desk with a large suitcase next to him, presumably a guest checking in, walked towards her, his eyes wide with shock. Helen jumped up off her sofa and approached him. ‘Excuse me. What’s going on? What did he say?’ She gestured towards the security guard, who had followed his colleague up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

The man leaned towards her as though telling her a secret. ‘Awful. Someone’s got a gun . . . top floor . . . The roof . . . There’s been a shooting. Police are on their way . . .’

Somehow, Helen knew what he was going to say next before he said it. And she wondered, before he’d said it, how she could have been so stupid as to not make the connection before, when she was sitting in the loft like a bird on an empty nest, staring at those photos and wondering why Penny had come back.

Now she knew why Penny had come back, and why she’d wanted to meet her at the hotel. Why she always asked about Frankie.

‘. . . it’s a woman. And she’s got a little girl with—’

Helen had run for the stairs too, before the man had even finished the sentence.

‘Come on Frankie,’ I say. ‘Time to wake up.’