My phone rings a third time. I’m sure Dave’s told me all he knows and I’m ready to go now. The phone call is perfectly timed. My heart freezes as I see the number for New Barn Cottage.

“Where the fuck are you?” Ruth sounds dangerous. She’s not shouting, but her voice is thick with rage. I imagine the muscle in her neck twitching. I search around my head for somewhere other than here that I should be. I thought our meetings with Dr. Bunce were over. I look at Dave, point at my phone as I move away towards the toilets. Ruth starts laughing, joylessly, down the line.

“You forgot, didn’t you? Our son has been waiting for you for the last forty-five minutes, Jon. You were taking him out for ‘boys’ burgers’ after school, he said.”

“Oh fuck.” I see Jakey waiting outside the house, checking the time on his phone, staring down the road for my car, checking the time again, and my heart withers to ash.

“Can you put him on?”

Ruth pauses. She knows how important it is for Jakey and I to have a good relationship, for us both.

“Wait a minute,” she says and I hear her feet running up the stairs. I picture her hand pushing Jakey’s bedroom door open, picture him facedown and burning with rage on his bed. Ruth’s muffled voice comes through the receiver, she sounds conciliatory, pleading, but Jakey’s reply is short and angry and I know he won’t talk to me.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you at the moment,” Ruth says, playing the peacemaker. Brownie points for Ruth.

“OK, OK, that’s fair enough. Can you just tell him one thing for me?”

Ruth makes a gravelly sound in her throat, like she’s about to lose it with me

“Please, Ruth, just one thing. Tell him I’m sorry, and tell him I’m going to find Grace. I’m going to find Grace for him.”

Ruth snorts down the phone. I hear her trudge back downstairs as she says, “Jon, are you losing your fucking mind? Is that what’s going on here? You can’t even keep a burger date with our son and you’re trying to play the hero?”

She waits for me to lash back at her, but I bite my tongue.

“You’re delusional, Jon,” she says and hangs up.

Ten minutes later I’ve left Dave in the pub with his hundred quid and am on my way home. I’m furious with myself for forgetting my promise to Jakey, but my anger is weighted by the realization that I might just be able to keep my bigger, far more important promise. I might be able to find Grace, or at least find out what happened to her. I heave my guilt onto a distant shelf in my mind, somewhere I rarely bother to reach. I need to think now. On the drive an endless loop of questions is running through my head, about the twins and why and how Grace got mixed up with them. Grace led a sheltered life, she’d be the last person to come across career criminals like the Craigs. Why would one of the twins be interested in a disabled kid unless there was something connecting them, something I can’t see? Could it be the pills Dr. Rossi prescribed? Simon knew about the twins, so it can’t be a coincidence. Could he have known they were involved with Grace’s disappearance? The way he said it—the twins—it sounded as though I should already know them. But then again, he wasn’t making much sense at the time; I have no real idea if he can be trusted.