They peered over their screens as he came in the room and Sasha rolled over onto her back, speaking to him from an upside-down position, which reminded him of his own daughter. Every time he looked at them he was jolted by their similarity and it hurt like hell, but also served to justify some of the more suspect choices he had made on behalf of the Kennedy-Craig family.

‘Hey, George, when can we go home?’ she asked.

‘Like I said, when everything blows over you can get back to your lives, and once you’ve got your stories straight.’

‘George,’ it was Chloe’s turn. ‘We’re not stupid; we can remember instructions. We’re not going to rat,’ she said.

‘That might be a bit difficult with you all over the newspaper,’ he said, holding up the rag.

Both girls stopped gazing at their machines and sat up, looking at the paper in his hands. It was a story about their social media posts.

‘Two missing fifteen-year-olds has made big news and now I don’t know what to do with you,’ George said. ‘If you go back to school and get picked up by the police then they’re going to grill you about what you were doing at that house.’

Chloe got off the bed and grabbed the newspaper from him, and squealed. ‘Oh my God, we’re in the paper!’ she beamed.

George rolled his eyes as Sasha joined her friend in the celebration. ‘Let me see!’ Sasha demanded. They read the story together. George seethed; these girls were confounding and predictably immature.

‘Shit, we’ve been reported as missing,’ Chloe said. ‘I told my fucking mum to say I was at yours,’ she said to Sasha.

‘Me too,’ Sasha agreed.

They looked at George.

‘Can we see our Insta? George, please! I bet we’ve got, like, thousands of likes,’ Sasha pleaded.

‘Hundreds of thousands,’ Chloe added.

George ground his teeth. ‘Look, both of you, sit down. Jesus,’ he added. The girls did as they were told, and gave a hint of their young age. They were suddenly behaving like the innocents they really were, and George felt the desperate gravity of his situation. Controlling teenage girls was about as reliable as betting on the Grand National, and he regretted not talking Vivienne out of it. But the damage had already been done. He told himself that, in the long term, he was protecting the Kennedy-Craigs’ family name. Once the accident blew over and the investigation was closed then everyone would have forgotten about the sleaze allegations and the two girls. These things disappeared out of the news quickly, he told himself, and Vivienne agreed.