He span round. ‘What did you say?’

Winkler held his hands up. ‘Oh nothing. Just feel sorry for these kids, that’s all.’

Patrick exited the Gents before he did something he regretted. Winkler had managed to press three of his buttons in one brief exchange. He looked down and realized his fists were clenched, his nails digging into his palms, leaving a row of little crescents.

Alice Philips was dressed all in black, with dark eyeliner, shiny boots and her naturally raven hair tied back with a scrunchie. She sat with her arms folded across her black T-shirt, obscuring the name of a band that Patrick was sure he wouldn’t have heard of anyway. He had to face it: he was out of touch. Most of the CDs he bought these days were deluxe reissues of albums he’d loved twenty years ago. God, even buying CDs marked him out as a dinosaur. But he liked to think that he and this teenage Goth – or was she an emo? – had something in common, even though she would no doubt cringe if he told her that he used to dress like her, had long hair that he’d back-combed and dyed to make it look like hers.

Beside Alice sat her appropriate adult – the neighbour, Sally Jameson, a woman in her late fifties who reminded Patrick of Camilla Parker-Bowles, vaguely aristocratic, who kept shifting in her seat like she couldn’t believe she was here, in a room in a police station that smelled like farts, when she should be eating strawberries and cream at Wimbledon. Sean and Helen had asked her to accompany Alice, understandably unwilling to spend any more time in an interview room.

Patrick opened his notepad while Carmella set up the video camera.

‘How are you feeling, Alice?’ he asked in a soothing voice.

She shrugged, then said, ‘Sick.’

‘You’re not well?’

‘No. Sick with worry about Frankie.’

The whites of her eyes were bloodshot, from tiredness or crying, perhaps both. Her body language was defensive, her arms wrapped tightly around her torso like she was freezing cold, despite the sticky warmth in the room. She would barely make eye contact, though that was normal for teenagers talking to cops. Beneath the desk, she jerked her legs up and down in a way that reminded Patrick of himself. Even today, his mum was always complaining about his restless leg syndrome.

‘We just want to ask you about last night.’

‘I don’t know anything,’ Alice blurted, hugging herself even more tightly.

Carmella said, ‘Alice, there might be something that you don’t know is important. So we need to go through everything. Is that okay?’

She said, ‘Yeah,’ looking straight into the camera.

‘Alright,’ Patrick said. ‘Tell us what happened last night. From the point your mum and dad went out.’

‘She’s not my mum.’

‘Sorry, your stepmum.’ He made a mental note of the way she’d spat those words out.