God, she’s hot. She takes off her jacket and threads it between the straps of her bag. The sun burns the back of her neck. She glances down at her mobile. The next address is at the end of Wrotham Road and, as she heads down the street, she can see a haze of blue in the distance. The sea. This is more like it, she thinks, excitement bubbling up inside her. This address is a converted flat in a large red-brick Victorian building. She buzzes Flat C and waits, mentally keeping everything crossed that she’ll get some kind of lead.

But nobody answers, even though she rings the bell three times, then holds the button down for at least ten seconds. The disappointment is acute. What does she do now? Put a note through the door hoping that Alan Hartall still lives here? Hoping it doesn’t get picked up and thrown away by a resident in one of the other flats?

She’s rummaging in her bag, trying to find a pen and something to write on, when she hears a crackle of the intercom and a man’s voice: ‘Hello.’

Adrenalin ripples through her. ‘Hello. Is this Alan Hartall?’

‘Yes?’ His voice sounds croaky. Old. ‘Who is this?’

She can hardly believe it. Can it really be the Alan Hartall?

‘My name is Lorna. I hope you don’t mind me coming over out of the blue like this, but I’m trying to find the Alan Hartall who knew a Sheila Watts, back in the 1970s.’

‘Right,’ says the disembodied voice. ‘Are you police?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. Just . . . it’s someone I think perhaps my mum used to know as well. Did you know a Sheila Watts?’

There is a pause, just the crackling of static. She wonders if he’s even heard her. ‘Hello,’ she says again. There is no answer. Has she said something wrong? Maybe he’s got the beginnings of dementia too. Maybe he’s hard of hearing. Or . . .

Her thoughts are interrupted by the main door swinging open. On the other side of the threshold stands a man in his seventies with a white thatch of thick, wiry hair. He’s holding a walking stick but he looks sprightly, in jeans and a T-shirt.

He has hazel eyes, a large nose and bushy eyebrows threaded with silver. ‘You knew Sheila Watts?’ he asks.

It is him. It has to be, she thinks. ‘Yes! Well, no . . . not exactly. My mum did, I think. I found a clipping in her things about Sheila’s death.’

‘Yes, that was a sad business. She seemed a nice girl. Not that there’s much I can tell you about her. I didn’t know her that well.’