Paul and I sat in the folding chairs. After we had exchanged the news of our separate uneventful days, we divided the Evening Standard between us and read the reports of the clashes. There had been an attempted robbery at a Bangladeshirun curry house. A fight between rival gangs had broken out in the street outside the restaurant and the violence had then spread across the estate. A couple of cars had been overturned and torched, and some shops had been looted. Smouldering embers of aggression had finally been fanned into flames by the heat.

There was an acrid mass of frustration and an indefinable anxiety balled within my own chest. It was so stifling and airless tonight. The air tasted as if it had been breathed too many times. I had to work to keep inflating my lungs with the oxygen-depleted residue.

I was listlessly folding the newspaper when my mobile rang.

Penny’s voice was so jagged with panic that I sat up sharply and sent the contents of my bag spilling over the ground. ‘Cassie’s disappeared.’

‘What? When?’ My heart lurched and started hammering in my chest. Paul froze in the act of retrieving my belongings and stared up into my eyes.

‘After you left. Evelyn thought she’d come across to be with me in the bindery, but I hadn’t seen her since before her sleep. She’s gone.’

She had been there, in the kitchen. Wet in her red swimsuit. Evelyn listless and sulky with the phone and her pack of cigarettes.

‘How long?’

‘An hour. We’re searching. The police are coming. Did you see anyone? Anything at all, before you left?’

I made the pictures, a little innocent loop of film, play over in my head. The boats in the sink, the empty yard and the bindery doors open, dusty light, Evelyn sitting at the table. Nothing I could identify as unusual. ‘No. I’m on my way,’ I gabbled. I took my bag out of Paul’s hands, almost falling over the chair in my haste.

‘I’ll drive you,’ he said at once, not yet knowing where or why.

I called a rapid goodbye to Jack and then we were in the car. Paul trod on the accelerator and we shot forward. ‘Cassie,’ I said. I saw his knuckles go white as his hands gripped the wheel.

There was a police car outside Penny’s house. When I ran into the kitchen I found an officer with a notebook trying to talk to Evelyn who was weeping hysterically with clenched fists pressed against her mouth. ‘A red swimsuit.’ She choked. ‘With a pattern of starfish. Blue canvas shoes.’