As soon as she left the house she was confronted by Freya’s face, enlarged and replicated in high-gloss, high-res, full color. Her eyes were unnaturally blue, the medal round her neck the brightest gold, the flush to her cheeks the shade of strawberries. The effect was overwhelming, unavoidably reminiscent of the shiny, sporty girls Emma had half idolized and half hated at school. And the words shouting below that smile: have you seen freya?

Emma suspected the police wouldn’t have stretched their resources to these ultra-quality posters. She imagined Steph laboring all night after leaving Emma’s flat, her printer in overdrive. I could’ve done that, she thought. That’s one thing I could’ve done.

Her gaze flickered to Chris Watson’s car. Its monochrome driving-school logo was like the antithesis of the vibrant posters. Emma dipped her head and hurried on.

Freya’s image turned the corner with her, continued to punctuate her route until she smelled the river and felt guiltily glad to escape the teenager’s dazzling gaze. The river path was one of the things Emma loved about living here. The rainbow of moored, swaying narrowboats; the pub gardens with fairy lights threaded into their fences; the German restaurant with outdoor benches and strong beer, where she’d been for lunch with Zeb and her parents a few times. But today the gloom of the sky was reflected in the water, the whole scene a rolling wash of gray.

She walked as far as Kingston Bridge, where she’d once seen a mo will you marry me? banner hanging from the railings. She remembered how she’d grinned, imagining the story behind it, the unknown Mo’s reaction . . . but as she approached the bridge today, she stopped dead.

Paul Harlow was in the middle of it, talking to a woman in a red coat. The pair stood a small distance apart, their backs to Emma, staring downriver. They could have been mistaken for strangers who happened to have stopped in the same spot, but she could tell by the angle of their heads and the movement of their bodies that they were talking. As Emma watched, their conversation grew more animated. The woman reached for Paul’s arm but he yanked it away and stormed off toward the opposite bank.

The woman stayed on the bridge. She leaned both palms on the pale stone barrier, watching Paul go. Then her head turned to stare down at the water and her shoulders shook as if she was crying.

—

All the way home, Emma pondered what she’d seen. Was the woman connected to Freya? Did Steph know about the meeting, which had seemed so emotionally charged? Emma thought of the shouting from last night, the smashing glass. And the evening before that: Steph at the bottom of the stairs and Paul’s shadow stretching down toward her.

She didn’t know what to make of any of it.