Her glance flickered distractedly over the shelves where some of his old model sets were displayed.

‘What do you think of her?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Corinne.’

‘She seems nice enough. Friendly. Confident.’

‘Her English is excellent,’ she remarked, adding: ‘It makes me wonder why she’s even here.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, I thought it was a good idea, this exchange. But now, I just wonder if it’s too soon.’

‘It’s a bit late to have doubts, Abi.’

‘True.’ When she spoke again, it was in a lowered voice. ‘If you’d seen Beth at the airport – my God, the anxiety. So pale and worried.’

‘She gets anxious about these things. So what? She seems fine now.’

‘No one spoke to her. None of the girls in her class.’

‘Not even Lisa?’

Lisa had been Beth’s best friend since kindergarten. At least she had been until ‘the incident’ as they kept referring to it, for want of a better term.

‘They didn’t even look at each other,’ Abi admitted now.

At the airport, Abi had chatted to her friend, Irene Ferguson – Lisa’s mother – while they’d waited at Arrivals. All the while they were talking, Abi had kept an eye on the group of girls hovering by the gates. It was such an awkward age, fourteen. Some of these girls still looked like children, and yet others had breasts and hips and attitude to go with it. If what was spoken about today’s teenagers was to be believed, then a lot of these girls were already drinking and smoking. Some of them might be sexually active or experimenting with drugs. It was frightening, the stuff parents were warned about these days: cyber bullying and self-harm. Sharing indecent images of themselves with their peers. Paedophiles lurking in chatrooms. Suicide ideation. They were just kids. Why were they in such a hurry to grow up?

Lisa had stood alongside Sasha Harte and Nicole Nash, showing them something on her mobile phone. Abi observed the tight little triumvirate they had formed. Sasha with her arched brows, sweeping her hair over one shoulder and making some comment out of the side of her mouth. Nicole, small-eyed, sneaky, her hand moving to cover a mouth full of braces as she giggled at Sasha’s aside. And Lisa – mild-mannered, waifish, thin brown hair and sad eyes – Abi had known this child since she was four years old. All those years Beth and Lisa had spent going in and out of each other’s houses, it seemed to Abi as if Lisa was almost as familiar to her as her own children. It pained her to see Beth – pale, copper-haired, freckled – standing alone, not talking to anyone, a distance between her and the others. Abi had felt a push of silent alarm.

‘Have you talked to Irene about it?’ Mark asked now, drawing her attention back to him.