Her heart sank when Paul answered. She’d really hoped to talk to Steph alone. He looked exhausted, but still so unreadable, even as Emma blurted, “I’ve spoken to Zeb about Freya.”

He led her wordlessly inside. She’d been right in thinking their flat was much bigger than hers. They went through to a large living room and Emma was diverted by the feeling of space and light, the expanse of varnished floorboards, the lampshades hovering above, like satellites.

The brightness seemed to fade, however, as she took in the people sitting around the room. Steph was hunched in a chair beside the window, almost a mirror image of the one Emma had pulled close to her own window a floor below. The family liaison officer, George, was distributing cups of tea while the woman she presumed to be Paul’s mum fussed with coasters on the coffee table. The gray-haired version of Paul sat clutching a wad of paper and a pen, staring into space. The atmosphere was hushed but expectant, like the morning of a funeral.

“Emma’s here,” Paul announced, and all the heads pivoted, their anxious anticipation suddenly centered on her.

Steph stood up. “Have you spoken to your son?”

Emma nodded. Her heart was hammering again. She wasn’t sure she could say the thing she needed to in front of all these people. George looked as though he was going to speak, but the woman with the round glasses cut across him. “What does he know about our Freya?”

Emma had mentally rehearsed how she was going to summarize her conversation with Zeb, but now her thoughts scrambled. She didn’t know who to look at, so she focused on a print on the wall: the swirls of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Her gaze was compelled toward the photo of Freya beside it. She looked sunlit and happy, her smile unguarded. It was hard to imagine her necking vodka, hard to comprehend secrets or problems that might have led her away from this clean, comfortable home. Especially not the one she’d shared with Zeb, now trapped in Emma’s throat.

“He . . . he and Freya bumped into each other one night in the park. They got talking, had a drink together, nothing—” She stopped herself from saying nothing untoward, not wanting to plant ideas. “Nothing major.”

“When was this?” Steph asked.

“About two months ago, a Friday night. Freya was supposed to be staying at a friend’s but apparently she hadn’t felt like going. Zeb said she was . . . upset.”

“Upset? Why?”

Emma shuffled her feet. “Well, Zeb said that it . . . it was related to something she’d found out”—she motioned toward Steph, then broadened the gesture to encompass Paul as well—“about her parents.”

There was a shocked silence. Steph stared toward Paul but he was looking down, pressing his temples, seeming to sway back onto his heels.