“Stars? I don’t know, he didn’t say.”

This gives me a tiny sliver of hope. If it didn’t have stars on it, if it’s not the same dress, there’s still a chance, isn’t there?

Jon’s arm drops from around my shoulders. He glances out to sea before he says, “Ben has a contact in the police, they said there’s no DNA evidence connecting Simon or anyone else on record to the murder scene. Simon must have been lucid enough to do his homework, to keep himself well covered. They also said the post-mortem tests on Megan’s body came back negative—apart from signs of struggle there were no drugs in her system, no signs of sexual assault . . .” Jon trails off. I’m glad, I don’t want to hear any more about forensics and autopsies, not now, not here. But I notice how restless he is, how his eyes dart about, and I know there’s more he needs to say.

“What is it? You’re not telling me everything. Have they found something else?”

“No, no, nothing like that.”

“Simon, then?”

“No sign of him either.”

“Then what is it?”

I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. “Jon! Tell me!” I almost shout.

“OK. But first I need to know if Grace was ever known by any other name.”

“Meg called her ‘Mouse’ but she was always Grace to everyone else. Why?” He tells me about Meg, about how she didn’t complete Grace’s passport application, about an issue she had with Grace’s birth certificate. I’m confused, starting to lose patience when he asks, “Do you know Grace’s birthday?”

“Tenth of September, I think.”

Every birthday Meg made her a pink cake she couldn’t eat. Grace liked to blow out the candles.

“What year?”

I think about it—I know I missed Grace’s last few birthdays. “Two thousand one, I guess?”

Jon shakes his head, shows me the screenshot. It takes me a moment to process. It’s the birthdate for someone called Zoe Grace Megan Nichols. Zoe? I’ve heard that name recently. It takes me a moment, but then I remember the thick air of the nursing home, how Charlie’s wrinkled mouth whistled around a word when I showed him the photo of Meg and Grace—he could have been saying “Zoe.”

But it’s not Grace, it can’t be, the year is wrong.

“It must be someone else with a similar name. That’s all.”

Jon shakes his head. “With exactly the same middle names? Born on the same day, in the same city? I’ve searched the records—there was no Grace Megan Nichols born in Plymouth on the tenth of September 2001. This is too big a coincidence to ignore.”

My mouth feels ashy. I swallow and tell Jon about Charlie, what I think I might have heard. He’s right, it’s too big a coincidence. Jon doesn’t blink as I talk, just stares at me and says, a crackle of excitement in his voice, “This must be her, then. Grace isn’t Grace, she’s Zoe. She’s twenty and she’s called Zoe.”