He looks a bit more together now than he did in that photo. Neither of us has said anything for a while when he moves to the front of the table.

I stop scrubbing and frown up at him as he says, “Look, I didn’t plan on turning up like this, I live just up the high street, above the Ladbrokes. I’m trying to finish an article about the summer fair, but I can’t concentrate, I keep thinking about Megan and Grace. So I decided to go for a walk to clear my head, then I bumped into you.”

I stand up straight, to look directly at him. “Yeah, but you didn’t exactly bump into me though, did you? You must have seen me and decided to come over.”

He raises his hands and says, “No, you’re right, sorry. Wrong choice of words.” He drops his hands, shrugs. “It just felt serendipitous, is all.”

I shake my head. “I’m not talking to journalists.”

“How about ex-journalists?”

I roll my eyes at him, drop the brush into the soapy bucket, planning to go inside and tell Brian not to let Jon into the pub, when he says, “Look, I just want to try to help. I know my article . . . well, I know I made some mistakes and I want to try to make up for them.”

I stop walking because I hear the guilt in his tone; I recognize it from my own voice. I wasn’t a good enough friend to Grace, I know how regret can beat away like a drum. In the past few years I’ve not been there for Grace, and now she’s gone. I turn around to face Jon as he keeps talking.

“Look, I only want to try to help find Grace. I am, or was, a good journalist. I’m also the only investigative journalist who met them all, even Simon. If there’s a chance I can help Grace, I have to do everything I can. I’ve tried, but I just can’t sit on my arse while a sick child is missing. I keep thinking if it was my son that had been taken—” He stops suddenly, looks up to the sky, and works his jaw. “God, sorry, I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I’m meeting a doctor in Plymouth tomorrow, someone who used to know them, but apart from that I’m around. I’m just going to leave my card on the table—”

“What’s the doctor called?”

He’s quicker at clocking my interest than I am at concealing it. “Dr. Nina Rossi, I met her before . . .”

But he doesn’t finish his sentence because he’s seen the recognition spread across my face, the surprise. As he says the name I see each letter carefully written in colorful balloons in Grace’s childish handwriting, the same at seven as it was at seventeen. I push my fringe off my forehead with the back of my hand, leaving a wet smear of soap bubbles across my skin, but I don’t care.