“Okay. Hardest first,” said Leonard, clicking on the images beside Dan. Immediately, multiple faces filled the screen in a veritable smorgasbord of potential Dans, which Leonard lined up neatly, side by side. I was finding it hard to focus with so many choices and for a brief moment I drifted off and wondered if it were possible I’d slept with them all.

“Can you see him there? The right Dan?”

Leonard’s voice brought me back to the job at hand and I pictured myself walking along this virtual lineup in a real-life police station, hands behind my back, staring through the glass. I imagined stopping and examining their faces in detail, taking my time to make sure I made the right decision, then slowly raising a scrawny finger to point and say, “That’s him, he’s the one!” And then the guy running forward with his arms open, shouting, “I have a son, I have a son!”

But it wasn’t like that at all, because Dan McLachlan (as it turned out) hadn’t changed a bit. He still looked like the same handsome law student he’d been more than a decade ago, with just a little bit of manly wear and tear around the edges. Which got me wondering just how much wear and tear I’d accrued since my university days. As a distraction from thinking about that, I amused myself by doing the scrawny-finger-point thing at the photo of the real Dan.

“Yes? That’s him?” Leonard was absolutely delighted. “Aha! Excellent!”

I peered into Dan’s slightly older, still very arrogant face (oh yes, it was all coming back to me now), searching for a sign. Because, and it’s not just that he was the first on the list and looked like he’d aged well, even with my limited memory it seemed like he’d be a front-runner, if we’re playing the probability game. Because he’d stayed the weekend, if you get my drift. I studied older Dan’s blue eyes and perfectly shaped ears intently, but I couldn’t find a thing that reminded me of Norman.

Leonard slotted the winning Dan into the spreadsheet next to his name and began dispensing with the others, which was a shame, because a couple of them looked quite nice. As their faces disappeared from the screen I thought how lovely it might be to just choose a few more of them for a set and be done with it. But Leonard was already back to the spreadsheet, deleting like a man possessed and sending the losing Dans’ details into the abyss. Before I could even come to terms with the loss, he’d opened up another window on his computer.

“Google Maps, Sadie!”

He sounded so proud I wondered if he might have invented it and, frankly, at this point it wouldn’t have surprised me. I only had a passing notion as to what one did with a Google Map, because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone anywhere I hadn’t already gone a hundred times before. But all those little flags and bubbles looked impressive and I did at least recognize a map of the UK when I saw it.