There had been a floorplan, in the estate agent’s particulars. Casey had glanced at it. Up the elegant staircase, down a corridor, third door on the right: a lovely bedroom, windows to the garden, photographs of toys, a cot, clouds stencilled on the ceiling.

I know too much about you, Casey thought, and far too little.

‘What happens,’ said Dominic, ‘when you get her home? Our daughter. Would you go to the authorities then?’

‘You’d be our source,’ said Miranda. ‘We always protect our sources.’

‘How can you be sure? We’d end up all over the Post.’

‘You have my word,’ said Miranda.

Dominic looked at her with near-contempt.

‘How,’ Emily said wonderingly, ‘do you get to make that decision? What gives you the right?’

Miranda tilted her head and stared at her.

‘Who,’ Dominic straightened up finally, ‘would stand in for me, if we go ahead with this mad idea?’

Miranda glanced at Casey. ‘I know someone. He’s excellent at this sort of thing. Done it before.’

‘No one from the Harley Street office actually travels out to Bangladesh with the couples.’ Casey seized the opportunity to drag the conversation back to logistics. ‘We know there is a fixer who organises it all on the ground. You wait in a hotel in Dhaka, and they just bring the baby to you.’

They were nodding, Casey realised. They knew this already.

‘Greystone said they didn’t keep notes,’ Dominic said unwillingly. ‘Our names would never be connected to all this. They don’t have photographs of us to send out to Dhaka.’

You knew, thought Casey, and she watched Emily’s eyes swoop to her husband.

‘I go out there instead.’ Casey moved the conversation on swiftly. ‘And find out as much as I can about the whole operation. Where they keep the women, who they are, how they find them. And I’ll try and work out who is organising the passports at the High Commission now, too.’

‘You don’t,’ Miranda asked Dominic, ‘have any idea who organises the passports at the moment?’

But he only shook his head. Casey wondered if he might lie out of habit.

‘And would the passport be all right,’ Emily’s nerves surged, ‘doing it this way?’

‘We’ve worked it out,’ Casey didn’t quite answer.

‘Couldn’t we go?’ Emily begged again. ‘I’d ask all the questions, I promise. I would find out everything you wanted to know.’

‘We only have one chance,’ said Casey. ‘It would be far too risky, you doing it. And it could be dangerous.’

‘You don’t know what you’re doing, Emily,’ said Miranda bluntly.

‘I could try,’ Emily whispered.

‘It wouldn’t work,’ Miranda flattened her.

The Burton-Smiths turned to each other.

‘Dominic?’ Emily’s voice was high, wavering.

‘I love you.’