‘If you knew him, you’d know that he would never do something like this.’ She catches herself, as she realises that that technically isn’t true. ‘Take a kid he doesn’t know, I mean. You don’t have any idea about what really happened, do you?’

‘So, tell me. Please,’ I say. I haven’t come all this way to leave with nothing, even if it doesn’t lead me to Laurel.

Katrina is quiet for a moment, as if wrestling with something internally, before she begins to speak. ‘I’m only telling you this because I don’t want you to think badly of him, OK? I don’t owe you anything.’ She glares at me, and I nod to show her I understand. ‘He was getting divorced from my mum. She said I could stay with him over the weekend. I missed him, you know?’ Her dark eyes are sad as she watches the boy playing on the floor in front of us. ‘We had the best weekend. Then, on the Sunday night he said I didn’t have to go back, not if I didn’t want to. And I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay with him.’

‘Surely he knew your mum would call the police?’

‘I don’t think he cared.’ Katrina fiddles with the tassel on a pink cushion next to her, avoiding my eyes. ‘She was going to take me away, you know. She had it all planned. He’d left because she was so unbearable to live with, so . . . volatile. She’s high maintenance, my mum. He was unhappy, and he left, and then she wanted to punish him. So, she was planning on flying us both to Turkey on the Tuesday after I came home, and she wasn’t going to come back. He found out, and he wasn’t going to let that happen, even if it meant getting arrested.’

I let out a long breath and lean back against the couch. ‘Wow. It really didn’t happen like they said it did. I thought . . . God, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I thought. I literally jumped to conclusions.’

‘Yeah,’ Katrina gives a sad half smile, ‘the same way whoever called into that crime show did. And now the police are all over him, and he’s got to go through it all over again. He’s an old man – he doesn’t deserve this.’

‘But . . .’ I don’t want to say it, but I have to. ‘Surely, they must have had something other than this, to be able to bring him in? I mean . . . if it happened like you say, surely the police . . .?’ I rub my hands over my face. I am confused, tired and nothing seems to be making any sense any more.