You don’t belong here either, thought Casey suddenly, a brief burst of sympathy.

‘Emily.’ Casey stepped into her path.

Emily glanced up from the pavement, and flinched when she saw Casey.

‘Oh please,’ Emily whispered. ‘Please, no.’

In a single movement, Casey had pulled out her phone.

‘Here.’ It was a photograph, sent through by Savannah.

I went through my pictures, Savannah had typed. The girl in red on the left, that’s Romida.

‘Romida is thirteen,’ Casey said. ‘She was taken from the camps just a few weeks ago, so she isn’t the girl carrying your child. But we believe that your unborn daughter’s mother is being kept with her somewhere with a group of other women.’

Your unborn daughter’s mother . . .

Emily stared at the photograph. Romida was looking slightly away from the camera, excited and shy all at once. Her red dress was covered in roses, and her shawl – also red but with a different pattern – was wrapped around her head. The girl’s eyes were patient, and her mouth not quite used to smiling. Sitting on the floor of a makeshift playroom, she had one arm curled behind her, half hiding away. Next to Romida, her friend was more confident, beaming at the camera from beneath an orange headscarf. They had folded into each other, as teenage girls do, awkward with laughter.

Emily looked up at Casey, and her eyes were full of tears.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘If I could undo it all . . .’

‘We need to find out who is snatching girls like Romida,’ said Casey. ‘I can’t do it without your help. We don’t know where they are being kept in Bangladesh, and who is in charge of it all out there.’

‘But I . . . I can’t . . .’

‘We know that Dr Greystone is probably the person managing things from London,’ Casey went on. ‘But we don’t know anything else.’

Emily was staring at the photograph of Romida, the tulips dangling by her side.

‘As far as we know,’ Casey went on more gently, ‘nothing has happened to Romida yet. But it will, unless we can get to her, and stop it. You can keep her safe.’

Two small boys cycled past slowly, plainly proud of their bright new bikes, their laughter echoing down the street.

‘You don’t understand.’ Emily was struggling to get the words out. ‘We’ve been counting down the days until we could go and pick up our baby. The hours, even. I look at the scan they sent us every five minutes. I love her. I love her, as if she were already here. I couldn’t bear it if anything went wrong . . . If I wasn’t there . . .’