As she did so, something dropped onto the floor.

“What’s that?” Paul stepped forward and picked it up.

Both his mum and Steph paused, looking toward him, and he realized it was because he’d become totally still, frowning at what he’d found. It was a glossy strip of images taken in a photo booth. Freya was on the right of all four pictures, smiling, sticking out her tongue in the final one, but with something unfocused about her eyes. It took Paul a moment to identify the man with her. Arms slung round shoulders, the pair seemed pretty familiar with one another. In two of the shots, their cheeks touched.

“Who is that?” said his mum while Steph stood in shocked silence beside him.

Paul grappled to put a name to the face. He hadn’t really met him properly, hadn’t seen him around for a while, but remembered he was called something unusual.

It was Emma’s partner. The guy who lived downstairs with her, or used to at least.

Paul’s skin grew hot. Why would Freya have this man’s picture down the side of her bed?

PART TWO

20.

KATE

Twenty-five years earlier

Our opportunity comes sooner than expected. I hear Nick telling Mum he’s got a “work thing” on Tuesday night, so he probably won’t be round. Becca says I should make myself scarce, let her handle things, so I tell Mum I’m going to a friend’s house to work on a homework project after school. Part of me feels jealous that Mum might open up to Becca rather than me, but hope overrides it. This could be our only chance.

Actually, I don’t have many friends at school. People don’t want to partner with me because they think I’m a daydreamer: I melt into my own thoughts too often. They don’t realize that when I’m one to one with somebody—like Becca, say—it’s as if my on switch has been pressed. Sometimes Becca and I laugh until we cry at pretty much nothing. And when we put our minds to it, like now, we can achieve things too.

I leave school and walk in the opposite direction from home, wandering through the area with all the colorful fabric shops, spicy smells, sari-clad women fluttering through the streets. Soon I’m crossing green fields rimmed by broken fences, the grass cool through my thin soles. When buildings loom in the distance, I realize I’m on the outskirts of the airport. A plane takes off on the horizon, silhouetted in the orangey twilight; another follows and I imagine them queued up, waiting to launch themselves into the sky.