‘I’m here with a friend … someone else who knew Sarah. Please can you help us clarify … the situation with Sarah’s parents? A woman from the local authority said police couldn’t …’ I’m reaching back in my mind, trying to remember the exact words of that conversation, which feels like it happened so long ago.

They had no luck, tracing her parents, they tried but … there were a couple of other relatives, as well, deceased.

‘… that they couldn’t reach them?’ I manage. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know if any of this is appropriate, I don’t even know if you’re allowed to tell me …’

I squeeze my arm more tightly around myself, pressing it against my ribs.

‘Jennifer, I’m sorry. According to my notes – one sec, let me get them up. Yes, here … her mother in 2001, father in 2003.’

And what Mike says next unravels the careful design I’ve made, all the little stitches I’ve embroidered for myself; I feel the threads coming loose, my sense of reason fraying.

‘Jennifer, I’m sorry, but both Sarah’s parents have died … Almost twenty years ago.’

Chapter 24

Alastair scrapes his chair back from the table. A knife goes clattering to the floor. The shock on his face is a mirror of my own. Not as well, deceased but deceased as well. That young woman from the local authority had given me the facts – and I had completely misunderstood.

I hang up my mobile as Alastair bends forwards and clasps his hands in front of him, elbows pressing on his knees. I think I can actually see the tremors running through his legs.

My own heart is thundering. My own stomach is in knots.

He goes on sitting like that, head bent towards his knees. ‘Alastair?’ I manage to say. ‘Are you okay?’

People are looking at us. He clenches his hands tighter. ‘I’m sorry, I think … I think I’m having an anxiety attack.’

For a moment, I don’t know what to do. I have never seen someone else like this. I only know it of myself. Then what would you want? I shout at myself inside my head. All those times you felt your mind was fracturing, what did you need right then and there?

I manage to push my own chair back, get up and go round to him. I crouch down beside his seat and place a hand on his arm. Steady and kind.

‘Try to breathe more slowly,’ I say. ‘Honestly, just focus on your breathing.’ I say that, and just keep holding onto him.

He takes a shuddery breath in, lets a shuddery breath out. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. ‘I get these attacks. It’s been ages … since the last one … but what the man said just then, it’s another total shock.’