One day she told me she was keeping the money intact for when Claudia and James or the police found her and wanted it back. This, she believed, was bound to happen. She was convinced they were searching for her with as much zeal and determination as for Andrew Lane and Alison Barrie and the little boy. I said that if she really felt like that she could send the money back, make a package of it and one of us would take it to the post office in Formosa Street.

She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

“If you’re never going to spend it and you’re so sure you’ll have to give it back sometime, why not give it back now?”

“I couldn’t do it, Clodagh. I could not, I don’t know if this is the word, physically do it. My hands would not work for me.”

There was nothing more to be said. I thought she was becoming sick in her mind and I told Silver so, but all he said was, “Don’t worry about her. As time goes on she’ll come to see no one’s after her and she’ll go out and then she’ll be fine.”

In those months she had never been in touch with her parents in Kiruna. Weren’t they likely to be anxious? And how about the agency who had found her the job with Claudia and James? I thought it likely she had been reported missing and I wondered why there hadn’t been a hunt for her. When I considered what I read in the papers, saw on television and heard on the “wireless,” how a young girl had only to fail to go home immediately after an evening out or be absent from where she lived for more than a couple of hours for a police search to begin, it seemed strange that there was no hue and cry for Liv.

“It’s not strange,” Silver said. “Her circumstances were different. She got drunk and crashed a car and ran away. They know that. I expect they think she’s gone back to Sweden. That daft pair didn’t notice Liv was stashing their money away, they’re feckless about money, so they don’t know she’s got their two grand. They’d probably like to see her in court for driving over the permitted limit but, as for the money, they’d be incredulous if they knew she was sweating over them finding her.”