Shit. Scrambling for an answer, I come up with something that is immediately clearly ridiculous.

‘Oh. Well you see, a good few years ago, I saw a little girl when we were on holidays. Blonde hair and blue eyes and dimples like Lily Murphy. And her mother was calling her Lila. It always stuck with me, but realistically it was probably because it was around the ten-year anniversary of her disappearance so her photo was in the newspapers again.’

‘But if it was the ten-year anniversary, how would she have been a little girl? She’d have been thirteen?’

I’m an idiot. ‘Yeah sorry, I meant a girl around thirteen. Don’t mind me, I’m just addled from all the googling. Forget the Lila thing.’

‘OK.’

I wait for more, but Cora has disconnected the call.

18

June 2018

THE TEXT FROM CORA early on Thursday morning catches me by surprise.

Joanna. I’ve been thinking more about our coffee the other day. I was a bit quick to stop you when you asked about the morning Lily disappeared. It might be good to talk. I’ve called in sick to work today. Do you want to stop by for coffee?

I reply immediately, telling her I’ll be there as soon as I’m back from the school run.

Mark must see something in my expression.

‘All OK?’ he asks, between mouthfuls of toast.

‘Yeah, grand – have you seen Emily’s water bottle anywhere?’

‘No, but just use the spare one.’

‘It’s in one of the boxes I haven’t unpacked yet,’ I say, rummaging for the third time through her school bag, as though the bottle will suddenly appear.

‘Mum!’ Emily shouts from upstairs. ‘Ben is taking like an hour to brush his teeth, can you tell him to get out?’ Mark and I exchange an eye-roll. Ben is no great fan of teeth-brushing so this has all the hallmarks of a deliberate provocation. But Sophie needs help with her shoes and I’m trying to get lunches into school bags and fill missing water bottles.

‘Mark, could you go up and referee Emily and Ben – just hurry him up a bit?’

‘Sorry, I gotta go before traffic gets too heavy,’ Mark says, planting a kiss on my forehead. He’s gone before I can answer. I let out a sigh. When I was working, I had to be in earlier than he did, leaving him to hand over to our childminder every single morning, and after years of dealing with bathroom wars and lunchboxes and shoes, I can’t blame him for making his escape now that he can. This is what you signed up for, I remind myself as the sound of Emily pounding on the bathroom door filters down the stairs – this is all part of ‘spending more time with the kids’.

It’s a full hour before I get them all to school and arrive back in Rowanbrook, but finally, I’m in Cora’s kitchen.

‘It’s not in great shape,’ she says, matter-of-factly. ‘My mother arranged to have it rented out when she went into a nursing home, and the last lot left it in a mess.’