‘I wonder …’ he began, then stopped and waited until she had shut the door. Now he was alone in the room with Holly. He had thought for one awful second earlier that he was going to be asked to wear the pouch – he’d heard more and more about friends sharing with each other, extended family units being formed, though to offer a pouch to a stranger would have been surprising. Still, that was what he’d thought, and he sighed in relief now that the pouch, and the mother, were out of the room.

‘I read …’ he started again, cleared his throat.

It was colder than he’d expected in this house – freezing outside of course, bloody Baltic, with that stinging clear sky, but he’d thought the central heating would be maxed up in here. No such luck. And the entire family seemed oblivious. The last few years he’d found his fingers were getting numb in the cold, completely numb. He clasped his hands together to try and bring back some circulation.

‘There’s been some speculation, possibly nothing—’

‘Come on, out with it,’ Holly snapped.

He studied his hands for a moment, flexed his fingers. He might be about to get thrown out.

‘Do you – did you stay in touch with Freida at all?’

‘No.’

No was good. Much better than the off-limits-to-the-press response he usually got when interviewing anyone who had known her personally. He tried to sit up but only sank further into the pile of cushions in a way that he imagined looked fairly ridiculous. So instead he leaned forwards, attempting to give the impression they were co-conspirators, that he was a man she could confide in.

‘You fell out?’

‘Now why would you think that …?’

Holly paused, as if about to say more, and suddenly he wondered if she had forgotten his name. She was an old woman, after all. Just a forgetful old woman. Ridiculous for him to have felt so awkward earlier. Had he actually been intimidated by her? He smiled what he hoped was a warm, open kind of smile.

‘She’ll be one hundred this year, I believe,’ he continued. ‘If she’s alive.’

Holly raised her eyebrows at him – he wondered if it was subconscious – but she didn’t reply and her silence eventually pushed him to give a little more away.

‘So, you don’t know where she is, then?’ He found he was unable to stop the smile that was creeping around his mouth. He’d been looking into Freida’s whereabouts for quite a while.

Holly’s feet suddenly seemed to be planted firmly on the floor, which was strange because, up until now, they had been dangling a few inches above the ground.

‘Do you?’ she asked mildly, as if making idle conversation, but beneath it he saw the curiosity in her expression, guarded and alert.

‘No one knows, exactly …’ he replied enigmatically, but she didn’t seem to register his response.