‘It’s all helpful,’ said Casey. ‘I am sorry you can’t travel with us. But if they spotted you . . . If they guessed . . .’

‘I know. And you need our passports anyway.’

They placed their two passports side by side for a second. Emily and Casey, Casey and Emily. There was a smudge of blue paint on Emily’s wrist, and she scrubbed at it, almost angrily.

‘They’ll do,’ Emily admitted, glancing between the two photographs. ‘We could be cousins.’

Casey stared at the grey eyes, the long brown hair, the scattering of freckles, and wondered about all the lives she might have lived.

The airport babbled around them.

‘I know what you must think of me,’ said Emily again.

Dominic and Ed had stepped away from them, separated momentarily by a caravan of baggage trolleys, trundling past in a long line. There were children shrieking, a mother wiping a nose. Come on, Mia, for heaven’s sake.

Emily stared with a naked jealousy that almost hurt.

‘I know why you did it,’ said Casey. ‘It’s all right.’

‘The worst thing,’ said Emily, almost to herself, ‘is that you never even know when to start mourning. “It can take ages,” people say, trying to help. “You’ve only been trying a year!” Then it’s two years, three years, four. And then there are the miracles. “Great-Aunt Jennifer, she didn’t have her first until she was forty-three! She was convinced she couldn’t! Imagine!” ’ Emily swallowed. ‘You don’t even know when to grieve.’

The line of trolleys had passed.

‘Have you ever lost a baby?’

The question startled Casey, and she recognised the irony as she flinched away from the intrusion.

She looked across at Emily. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Have you heard of phantom limb syndrome?’ Emily asked. ‘It’s almost like that, losing a baby. Rationally, you know they’re gone. But some dark recess of your mind won’t quite believe it. Can’t quite believe that the world could be so cruel. It’s a shock, the memory, every single time. That something so intrinsically a part of you just disappeared one day. Ceased to exist, just like that. Your mind sends back those flashes, bursts of pointless pain. There she is. In a playground, as you pass a school. There she is. Just waiting for me.’

They stood there in silence.

‘I am glad though.’ Emily tried to smile. ‘That you are going to find out about these people. It is horrendous. I can’t imagine what it must be like for that girl, Romida. Her life.’

Her voice was interrupted by an announcement over the loudspeaker, a bored woman listing delayed planes.