Afterwards, Lucy solemnly promised herself that she would never go looking for her father again. But that wasn’t just because she regretted upsetting her mother. It was also because her previous knowledge of her father, such as it was, had always been tinged with the excited belief that he was out there somewhere; only now she knew that if he was out there, he wasn’t hers any more. She could have met him on any one of those buses she’d ridden, and it wouldn’t have made any difference. He’d have looked straight through her, much as she’d have looked straight through him. There was nothing left between them; they had no connection at all.

And so she’d gone on with her life, happier, accepting that she had only one parent, which, after all, didn’t make her much different from lots of other British kids at the end of the twentieth century.

Until now.

‘Sister, I’m going to take you to St Winifred’s,’ Lucy said, coming back out into the personnel yard.

‘The hospital?’ The ex-nun was puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Your hand needs looking at.’

‘My child, it’s only a cut.’

‘It’s not only a cut. You’ve lost the whole fingernail, and that was a dirty place – the wound could easily have got infected, so I’m taking you to A&E.’

‘Don’t you have a first-aid kit here?’

‘We do,’ Lucy said, ‘but I haven’t got time for that. Likewise, I haven’t got time to take a statement from you. So, once I’ve dropped you off at hospital, I’m going to have to ask you to come back here tomorrow morning. Can we say ten o’clock sharp?’

Sister Cassie sighed. ‘Well … if you really think it’s important.’

‘I really and honestly do.’

‘Very well. But do we have to ride over there on that awful bike again? I was terrified. I almost fell off three times.’

Lucy held up a key. ‘No worries. We’ll take one of the CID cars.’

She didn’t bother to add that this time it was only likely to be dangerous when they actually got there.

‘It’s very kind of you to be doing all this,’ Sister Cassie said from the back of the battered old Ford Mondeo. ‘I always knew you were a good soul.’

‘You’ve got to promise you’ll get that finger seen to,’ Lucy said over her shoulder. ‘I won’t have time to sit with you and make sure you do.’

‘Do you think I’ll be waiting a long time?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lucy glanced at the dashboard clock. ‘It’s a Wednesday, so I doubt there’ll be as many in now as you’d get at this time on a weekend.’

‘I sincerely hope not. I have places to go and people to see.’