I nod, disappointed my brainwave hasn’t paid off, and watch as Fran pulls her glasses down from the crown of her head and puts the video in the recorder. I half expect to see an old box-shaped television like we had when I was a child, but Fran’s one nod to modernity is a sleek flat-screen TV.

It flickers to life and the video recording begins to play, opening with a handmade sign in red marker on what looks like a page pulled from a copybook. It reads Lily’s 3rd birthday! and I feel a creep of unease as we watch. The camera swings away from the page and hovers on a windowsill above a kitchen sink. The picture blurs but we can still make out the objects on the sill – a souvenir plate on a stand, a porcelain Alice in Wonderland, and a little white lighthouse with a green band at the top. The picture clears, then blurs, then clears once more as someone corrects the focus, and now the camera swings to a group of people at a kitchen table. A small girl stands on a chair, eyes wide as a cake is carried towards her. Her blonde curls reach just below her ears, pinned back from her forehead with a pink hairclip. Her dress is red with white polka dots and short puffed sleeves. Her hands – tiny hands – reach up as though to catch the cake. Laughter from those around her. God. God. Oh God, oh God. That face. That little face. White noise pumps in my ears now and I have to force myself to concentrate. It all matters. Any one of these people could be the link.

‘I remember this,’ Fran says. ‘I think I was there that day. I wonder will I see myself. Goodness.’

We watch and wait and I’m staring at Lily, but it doesn’t tell me anything really, and then the person holding the cake comes into focus, visible in side-profile. Tall and slender, dark hair in a bun, wearing a long turquoise-blue dress and a wide smile for her daughter. I shiver. Mary. I’ve seen photos of her online and to that extent, she’s familiar. The distraught mother, searching desperately for her missing child. But not beyond that. She is not, I think, a person from my past.

The camera jerks down, showing a man’s shoes, then up again. A male voice says something inaudible. More laughter. The camera pulls back, panning across the wider group of people as they sing ‘Happy Birthday’. I lean closer. To Lily’s right is a child of seven or eight, with a mass of springy curls the colour of sand, and a tiny, freckled face. She’s wearing a red spotty dress quite like Lily’s and a matching bow in her hair. Her gaze is not on the camera but on Lily. To her right stands a thin woman with dark hair. Like Mary, she wears it in a bun, but on her, it’s severe, pulling her features, making her sharp. She’s staring, unsmiling, at Mary. Fran points at the woman.