Her enhanced hearing hadn’t picked it up: Nick realised he could still hear Josie’s voice. Perhaps prompted by Anna, someone must have turned up the volume. Maybe Middleton.

‘What age is a caveman on his birthday? Stone age.’

Jane gave a laugh. Nick managed a smile. She held out her hand and he took it to lead her to the living room.

At one point, two miles out, there was a jam while a supermarket delivery truck backed out. A van in the next lane pulled alongside Anna and the passenger window came down. A plain-clothes policeman in a car three back saw it happen and told his base. Someone paused Josie’s stand-up routine and Bennet asked her what was going on.

‘Just a guy coming onto me,’ Anna answered. ‘Put Josie back on.’

A mile out from the destination, she saw a ginger girl Josie’s age with her father. She was riding a toy scooter, weaving in and out of pedestrians. Anna’s foot came off the accelerator. A van behind, with PHOENIX KNIFE AND SLICING BLADE SPECIALISTS and a mobile phone number on the bonnet, had to slow down. He blared his horn.

Child and father started to traverse a zebra crossing ahead. Anna hit the brake and watched them. The girl was looking the other way, so Anna jabbed the horn to get her to turn. An uncanny resemblance to Josie, combined with her daughter’s voice in the car, broke Anna out in goosepimples. The father was a few metres ahead of the girl, strangers between them, and she wanted to wind down her window and scream, Keep an eye on her, there’s animals out there!

Then they were across and the way was clear, but she didn’t move. She watched girl and father walk past her, so much closer now. She even had Josie’s blue eyes. She willed the girl to look at her again, but the child was too busy slaloming around shoppers’ legs.

The father was typing on his phone, ignoring his kid, which she found bizarre. All these people about, any one of whom could pick the girl up in a flash. If she ever took Josie out again somewhere busy, she was going to get one of those reins she’d seen on toddlers. No way was she going to go gallivanting off ahead.

She jumped as someone rapped on her window. A man was standing there, a snarl on his face.

‘Some guy’s shouting at her.’

That was the report from an officer in the car four spots behind Anna’s. Bennet ordered the CD shut off.

‘Anna, what’s going on? Who is that guy?’

Camera #6 showed her leaning away from the door, and the unseen man beyond it, in fear. But there was no fear in her voice when she said:

‘I don’t know him. Be quiet and put Josie back on.’