She nods slowly. ‘Portsmouth, my God. I had to stay there, with my dad. Three months before my mum got custody back.’ She stares down at the words she wrote years ago, the ones I’ve read too, again and again. Missing you. Really wish you were here. And the telephone number, so Sarah could call.

‘You can keep it, if you like,’ I say, but she shakes her head.

As she hands the creased card back to me, I catch sight of the watch on the inside of her wrist, the seconds ticking past. The second hand seems to move much faster than it should.

‘And – back then,’ I press on, ‘as a teenager … what was she like? What kinds of things do you remember?’

A look crosses Chloe’s face. A sort of pained nostalgia. ‘I mean, it was great. For a while, at least. I’d never had a friendship like that. She had a way of making me feel … very special.’

‘What about her family?’ I say, doing my best to keep my tone casual. ‘Did she talk about them?’

Chloe laughs, that barking laugh I remember from our phone call. ‘Her daddy was a great success and very handsome and her mummy was beautiful and the best in the world.’

It sounds as if she is quoting word for word. ‘Is that what she said? That’s how she described them?’ The saliva glands in my mouth cramp up. I put the juice bottle down again.

Chloe shrugs. ‘That was sort of the way she described everything.’

Do I tell her the truth about Sarah’s parents? Why do I get the feeling she already knows?

‘There was another relative too,’ Chloe goes on, ‘a stepsister? No – wait – a cousin. I’m trying now to remember her name; maybe it would help you. Sarah talked about her all the time; she carried around this photo of the two of them together.’

A photo? So … could this person be real?

‘So … so what happened between you?’