One night she’d crept down in her pyjamas and sat in the corner without her mum noticing. They were smoking something sweet and leafy, she thought, too young to place the scent, and they were talking about Freida. One of her mum’s friends was claiming to have met her – she could tell the story was important, even though she was only nine – everyone had heard of Freida, and no one knew where she was. Except that man with the long moustache and the beads around his wrist and the kind eyes, who winked at her. He was describing an old woman, it seemed to Eva, an old woman who was lonely and lost. Not the arrogant, single-minded scientist her mother had told her about. Her mum stood up, arms wild like she was about to say something really important, but then she saw Eva and started trying to hide the joint behind her back.

The memory made Eva smile. She was like a teenager, her mum. Rebellious. ‘Now my daughter’s caught me at it,’ she’d said. ‘My moral high ground slipping ever further away …’ And Eva had been allowed to stay, to listen to their talk of island communities, living off-grid, carrying life inside you. Seemed a bit icky to think of it like that, though Eva knew better than to say so. Besides, she was happy to stay quiet and watch. Her mum was radiant, at the centre of a group of hippies and artists who thought they were on the right side of a peaceful but essential fight.

And here were their names, catalogued in the address book along with journalists and parents of her school friends. But they were not the people Eva needed to speak with now. She found the FullLife staff her mother had known listed, beautifully and arbitrarily, under F. For FullLife? Fools? Fuckers? Knowing her mum, it could have been all three. Each had a name and a label: receptionist at London office, fired technician, research lab student (see Q), cleaner at birth centre, marketing intern. She must have started the list fifteen, twenty years ago – actually Eva had no idea when. Her mum had been monitoring the work of FullLife ever since Eva was old enough to ask what she was doing. The list could be forty years old, but it was possible that the research lab student might be a scientist now. Might still be working there. Or might remember something that had been brushed under the carpet, a shortcut taken … She flicked to Q and there was just one entry: Quentin. There was a personal mobile number.

Eva sat back on her heels and took a deep breath.