‘Her.’ George gently covers my hand with his, to still it. ‘I’ve made a note of her name but you’re not likely to get far. Patient confidentiality isn’t an exclusively British thing. Plus, do you speak Serbian? Montenegrin?’

‘No. But I’m guessing you do.’

He grabs a phone from his desk, dials, and speaks rapidly in a language that doesn’t sound remotely like any of the ones I know. He cuts off the call and shakes his head. ‘The doctor left a few days in advance of the Easter holidays with her family. Won’t return until the twenty-second of April.’

‘Fuck,’ I say.

‘And I thought you only spoke English,’ he says.

‘Very funny. When did Eliza go to Podgorica?’ I sip from a bottle of water that is somehow in my hand, without remembering how it got there.

George changes to yet another window. ‘She flew in on March twenty-first.’

‘Inside the dates with no CCTV.’ I am calculating. ‘So two months before Alice was born. Why not remain in the UK? Why make a deliberate decision to give birth in Montenegro? Have you found a record of where she was staying?’

‘Not so far.’

I come close to him, peer at the screen. ‘Can you bring up her medical notes?’

His index and middle finger are scrolling down the trackpad.

‘Is that Serbian?’ I say.

‘Yes. I’m no expert on maternity care, but it seems Eliza made one antenatal visit – it was a week before Alice was born.’

‘Just one medical appointment?’ I say. ‘And so late? Are you sure about that?’

‘There’s only one in the notes. They recorded her weight, tested her urine. There are measurements for the baby’s growth. Everything was normal.’

My stomach is tight, remembering how much I loved having those tests, but also remembering that last midwife appointment, when my bump measured on the small side of the normal range. I turn to Maxine. ‘One visit isn’t enough at that stage of pregnancy. Is it?’

Maxine puts her hand on my shoulder. Her voice is quiet, as if she is being forced against her will to talk about death with someone who is about to die. ‘It’s every two weeks after twenty-eight weeks, then every week in the last month. But . . .’

‘But what?’ My knees feel as if they are made of water, as if they can no longer hold my weight.

‘There’s something called confirmation bias. It’s when you make the evidence fit the story you want. Is that what you’re doing here?’

‘Don’t you see this is all off, Maxine? That something isn’t right?’