I stop talking when I see the look in his eye as I nervously relay the strange story. I can see why he looks at me that way. Three hours from home – one hundred and fifty miles – and I’m saying that visiting a mute patient I barely know is what we all get caught up in, from time to time. Sure. Why not. It’s normal.

Except, it feels like it is.

Okay, maybe not normal. But it feels right, and no longer like something I’m just doing to get answers about David. It feels like there’s more to it than that. Not that I’ve any clue how to explain that to the man before me, given that I can’t explain it to myself. As much as I don’t understand how she could have walked away from a child, whether I was that child or not, maybe I can relate to the broken soul within her. And not just because of our David, but because the broken soul is me.I look to my feet, then to James, with a sense of emerging clarity. ‘Have you ever met anyone, Mr Grey, and just felt this sense, from the very first time you locked eyes, that you were meant to be connected?’

James stares but doesn’t answer.

‘I’m not a religious man, Mr Grey, not particularly spiritual, but I’ve begun to wonder if sometimes people come into your life for a reason.’ The words roll off my tongue, sentences formed before I really know what I’m going to say. My confidence is growing. ‘Or sometimes people stay in your life longer than perhaps they should.’ I think about Michelle. ‘In truth, I should have passed this letter to the police the moment I heard she’d gone missing. Instead, I got in my van and came here. I don’t know why, or what prompted it, but I’m kind of hoping fate has intervened. Because if not, I’m in big trouble.’ I thrust the envelope towards him. ‘A letter for you, Mr Grey. Hand delivered, on behalf of Susan Smith.’

James’s persona of nominated grown-up pales, along with his face. He drops his eyes to the letter, taking it from me as he studies her writing. The lawnmower starts up again in the nearby garden. A phone rings out somewhere. But James just looks at the letter.

‘I used to live in Sheffield,’ he begins. ‘Years back. I was a kid, really,’ he says, his demeanour suddenly much less assured. There’s something about it I recognise, a dint in his armour.

‘Are you still in touch with anyone from there?’ I ask hopefully.

‘No,’ he answers sharply, then looks up. ‘We left pretty quickly. I lost touch with everyone. It wasn’t like nowadays – we didn’t have the internet or anything. When you moved, you moved.’

‘Right.’ I nod and pause, then decide to just go for it. ‘So do you know her?’ I know my purpose now. I have to make sure I’ve tried to get an answer for her, at the very least.