Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all that Eileen had turned up, thought Helen, blowing her nose on a piece of kitchen roll.

Lennon opened his notebook at a new page. ‘Mrs Philips, I take it?’

‘Last time I looked, yes,’ said Eileen, ‘Sean love, make your old mum a cuppa while I talk to this nice detective. It’s alright, we’ve already been introduced.’ Sean rolled his eyes at Helen but got up and refilled the kettle. Helen wiped her eyes and slipped out of the kitchen – Lennon would be busy with Eileen for the foreseeable future, and there was something she felt she had to do.

Noticing with despair the large suitcase sitting by the bottom of the stairs – that woman is staying here over my dead body – Helen went upstairs to the bedroom and opened the laptop she’d left on her bedside table.

She read the message again: I know where the lost children are. Can we meet? 2pm on Thursday in Teddington M&S café. I’m being watched. Can’t tell you over the Internet. DELETE THIS AND TELL NO-ONE.

‘Janet Friars’ profile gave away little information. As they weren’t friends on there, Helen couldn’t access her wall, but her profile picture was of a dog – a white Scottie – and there was no personal information to give Helen any clue about who this woman was.

She quickly typed a reply:

If you know something, you should go to the police. She sat and waited for a reply, but none came.

Chapter 14

Chapter 14
Patrick – Day 3

Fiona and Max Hartley opened their front door together, arm in arm. But it was less a demonstration of solidarity and support than a necessity, Patrick thought. They were literally holding one another up while everything about them sagged with grief – shoulders, eyes, mouths. Fiona Hartley could barely drag her hollow red-rimmed eyes up to meet Patrick’s. She looked even worse than when Patrick had last seen her, when Isabel had still been missing. He was glad he hadn’t been the one to break the news that Isabel’s body had been discovered.

‘Come in,’ Max Hartley said flatly when Patrick told them he was there to try and piece together Isabel’s movements over what had ended up being the final few weeks of her life. When he mentioned her daughter’s name, Fiona twitched briefly and clutched more tightly on to her husband.

Their wide hallway had sheets of plastic taped to the wooden floorboards and an old avocado-coloured toilet and basin leaning against the wall near the front door, alongside unopened boxes of new bathroom accessories and old broken tiles. Patrick had to step over the same length of copper pipe that he had negotiated last time he had been in the house. He remembered Max saying that his brother and he were doing the renovations themselves.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve done any more on your bathroom.’