He interrupts her. ‘If Connie was pregnant, then no one knew about it and that’s just not possible. I would have known. Her father would have known and so would other people. The police asked questions, obviously, but they didn’t pursue it. Why would they? Everyone said she had gone to Paris. She left a note for her father. She told people. Me. Eileen Clarke. And she looked the same as she ever did. She couldn’t possibly have hidden a full-term pregnancy. I mean, at the start she might have done, of course – but I saw her about a week or two before the baby was left in the house.’

Marina, though, has read stories about girls who hid the truth from their families out of shame or fear, binding their expanding bellies, eating less to keep down their weight. Girls who gave birth in hotels, or in car parks, or in woods, all alone. How terrifying must that be?

‘Are you certain that she actually left?’

‘Yes,’ Harry says firmly. ‘I remember, her father was staying with his sister at the time. In Whitby. I helped her . . .’ He hesitates. ‘I pawned some of her mother’s jewellery so that she could buy the ticket to Paris. I promised I would check on the bookshop and she gave me the keys. She trusted me. She would have told me if she was pregnant.’

‘How do you know she actually went? Maybe it was all a ruse and she was in her flat. Hiding.’

He looks away guiltily. ‘She gave me her keys and said I could spend time there if I wanted. So that’s what I did. It made me feel close to her . . . You know, sitting in the space that she used to sit in, touching the things she touched too. I know, it’s odd . . . But I loved her. I missed her.’ He shrugs. ‘She definitely wasn’t there. She was gone.’

Marina sighs. She pulls at her hair, releasing a strand and swirling it about her fingers.

Harry smiles sadly. ‘But you do look so damn like her.’

A lump rises in Marina’s throat. She speaks slowly, deliberately. ‘Do you believe that if Connie had been my mother she would have abandoned me?’

‘Honestly? I could no more see her doing that than I could see her abandoning her father. But who knows? She left – left him – and she didn’t come back. Not even for his funeral . . .’

Outside, the streets lamps are flickering on. One by one their yellow light struggles to brighten the dusk. The waitress turns the sign to closed.

Later, when she gets home, Marina passes Mrs Hyde on the stairs. If she looked small before, she seems positively shrunken now, clutching at the bannister for support.