Taking out her phone, she searched on Google Maps and Street View, zooming in on an ordinary terrace near Chertsey, only twelve miles away. She couldn’t think of a way to find out anything more. Couldn’t forget Steph’s wide, desperate eyes, her hands fretting at the fabric of that green scarf . . .

Something made her pause. What had just tapped at the back of her brain? The scarf . . . Steph had been wearing it ever since Freya had gone missing, but Emma had seen it somewhere else recently too.

She followed her train of thought into Zeb’s room, grabbing his photo-booth strip from the bedside cabinet. Freya was wearing the green scarf in those pictures. It made sense that it was hers, that Steph was clinging to it in her absence . . . and now that she thought about it, Emma had seen Freya with it before. But that wasn’t what was nagging at her.

She was sure Freya hadn’t been wearing it in the photo strip Steph had shown her only that morning. As Emma cast her mind back, other differences began to bother her. Hadn’t Zeb been wearing his brown winter coat in Freya’s version but his leather jacket in the pictures she was now studying? And wasn’t Freya’s hair slightly different too? Emma wished she could trust her memory, wished she could put the strips side by side to compare. Each time she swung toward thinking she was imagining things, something else would swing her back. Freya was drinking vodka here; Zeb had mentioned gin in his story. Were they, in fact, separate occasions? Had Zeb lied about the number of times he and Freya had met? If so, why?

Emma left the room and paced around her cluttered flat, something she seemed to have done too many times lately. She went to the window, inching it open to feel the cool night air on her face. The rain from earlier made the dark pavements look varnished, the puddles under the streetlamps like pools of golden oil. When the home phone began to ring, she jumped even more violently than usual, then felt a rush of combustible anger. She’d had enough of these intrusive calls. Enough of everything.

She stomped to the kitchen and snatched the receiver. This time she didn’t even say hello, meeting the other person’s breathy silence with her own. A long, intense moment pulled tight between them.

“Robin?” she demanded.

She expected the click of a hang-up. Instead the caller’s breathing quickened. Perhaps Emma would have hung up herself if her emotions hadn’t been swirling, climbing. What was Robin trying to do to her, even after all this time? She wasn’t fifteen anymore. And in messing with her—the parenting book, the eggs, the calls—he was also messing with a couple who were going through the worst possible ordeal.