Tom grew up in our road in Clerkenwell. When he used to try to pick Dad up from The Palladian, he’d come upstairs, plonk himself in one of our chairs and not stop going on about it. How he used to knock and ask Mum for one of those Ice Pops she was always giving out, or play ‘Chicken Square’ with us. He was a weedy-looking thing who rode a Grifter. ‘Yes, I remember him.’

‘The last time he came round, before he finally gave up – you were at work, I think – he told me he’d seen her, or thought he’d seen her, Ellen. Working in a shop in Muswell Hill. Said he never forgets a face.’

‘Even from decades before? What sort of shop?’

‘A travel agency. It’s … well, from what he said, it’s near your clinic, where they do the lasers. Where I used to take you.’

‘A travel agent’s,’ I say slowly and carefully, as though I’m drunk but trying to pretend I’m not. As though I can cope with the fact my brain and my mouth have turned to cotton wool.

We’re still at the kerb. People behind us tut but then notice my dad’s cane and say ‘Sorry’ or smile at us. I don’t smile at them. We’re teetering on the edge. I’m teetering on the edge. My mother works in the travel agent’s two doors from Loved Before. She works the other side of the laser clinic that has never been any use to me. And she has never been any use to me either, but she has been there, all this time.

‘Why are we not crossing, Prue?’ Dad’s cane is tapping on the kerb. His Adidas Italias scuffle impatiently. He knows how close we are to home.

‘She works near one of my shops. One of the clothes shops I always go to. Only two doors away.’

‘Oh. Have you seen her? You haven’t seen her, have you?’

‘No, of course I haven’t seen her!’

I feel angry. I feel we have been tricked, my sister and I – Angela, who cried for our mother over and over again, and me, who didn’t. I feel a fool that I’ve been mere feet away from her and I didn’t know. That while I was browsing dresses in Loved Before she was very close at hand and we could have passed on that street and she could have seen me, and I would have seen her. Without preparation. Without warning.

I have been so so close to her – a woman hiding in plain sight – and I simply didn’t know.