I say it at the same time, doing my best Yoda impersonation, but I’m not enjoying it like I normally do. I ought to talk to Chloe, but what the hell would I say? Plus Joe is about to leave, so maybe I don’t need to say anything. Coward! I pause the film and get up to fetch another beer, and that’s when I see it. A triangle of neonpink. It’s on a side table under a couple of books.

How did we all miss it? I feel stupid now for suggesting we should have called the police. I open Chloe’s iPad to check it’s okay. It turns on immediately and I swipe the home screen idly. There’s no passcode. Chloe should be more careful. The device opens straight into Photos, as if that was the last app she was using, and I’m faced with a number of albums. One of them is labelled Ruby-May.

I click on it and see around fifty thumbnail-sized pictures of my niece, from when she was born until… I shouldn’t be looking at Chloe’s iPad, I know, but I’m caught between wanting to be reminded of Ruby-May and not wanting to think about her. I leave the album as it is, as I don’t want to see any of the photos full-size. That would be too much. I can’t get rid of the images of Ruby-May I have in my head: her little fat feet with their tiny, perfect toes, white and wrinkled and dotted with pond weed; or her lips, with their Cupid’s bow, slightly parted and purple, the colour of the flowers she wanted to pick. As still as a doll, when she’d never been still in her life.

It’s good to be reminded of what she looked like before. Some of the pictures are of Chloe and Ruby-May. Chloe’s birthday is coming up soon; I could print one properly and frame it as a present. Without opening the images, I attach three to a text and I send it to myself, then delete the text from Chloe’s iPad. I want it to be a surprise.

As I try to close the app, it reverts back to all her pictures. I shouldn’t look, but I’m intrigued by what all the fuss was about. What kind of shots was Bethany taking of Chloe, to get Matt so worked up? I assume they’ll be of my niece in her bikini and shades by the pool, prepping to be an Instagram star. The first ones I see are of her and Carlo, goofing about at his farm. No sign of Dad, so it must have been one of the times she went on her own. I scroll through them.

The last pictures on the iPad aren’t what I was expecting.