‘No – I saw her across the garden and I recognized her, but I never got the chance to say hi. I’m sure I’ll see her around if she’s only next door.’ He fills a glass of water and swallows half of it. ‘God. I’m getting too old for parties. Anyway, I’d better start cleaning up the garden.’

As Mark gathers empty bottles from the lawn, I start the even less appealing task of sorting out the attic. Christmas decorations, suitcases, winter clothes and old kitchen chairs ‘in case we need them’ are sprawled all over the place, thrown up here when we moved in. Now, there’s no space near the hatch, and I need to move things to the eaves. I’m an hour into the task when I come across a battered cardboard box, deep in a dark corner where the roof meets the floor. It’s not one of ours, as far as I can tell. Pushing aside thoughts of spiders and mice, I lift the lid and shine my phone inside. Lying face down across the top is a picture frame. It’s big – about twenty inches square – and heavier than I expect when I turn it over. At first it looks like it’s a painting, but actually it’s a photograph, I think, bleached by time. A photograph of a pier, stretching out into the ocean. The kind you see on the west coast of America. There’s no glass protecting the photograph and it’s thick with dust. I set it aside and turn back to the box, which appears to be full of books – paperbacks and hardbacks, titles I recognize from the seventies and eighties. Mostly American authors, at least at first glance. And a video tape. A blank one used for recording from TV. I pick it up, squinting at the handwritten label: Lily Age 3, 1985.

Downstairs, I stare at the video cassette, wondering. Will it tell me anything – confirm that I had nothing to do with Lily’s disappearance? How can I play it? I’m googling ‘transferring film from video tape to digital’ when the doorbell rings. Emily answers, and when I come out to the hall, I find Fran standing on the doorstep, holding out a corkscrew.

‘I found it in my pocket. Sorry. I’m not usually a thief.’

‘Oh, no worries – thanks for bringing it back!’

She passes it to me, but I fumble, and both the video cassette and the corkscrew clatter to the hall floor. Fran picks up the video and Emily, rolling her eyes, picks up the corkscrew.

‘Old home movies?’ Fran asks, handing back the cassette.

I hold it up so she can see the sticker on the front.

‘I found it in the attic. I think it’s a video of Lily.’

‘Have you watched it?’

‘Well, no. I don’t have a video player.’

Fran’s eyebrows go up, as though it isn’t actually 2018 and it isn’t unusual to still possess a video recorder.

‘Do you not? How do you watch videos?’