Maureen picks up her plate from the table. ‘It is storage, Chloe, but . . . it’s best left, that’s all.’

‘But—’

Maureen scrapes the last of her food into the bin and puts her plate in the sink. She wipes her hands on a tea towel, then follows Patrick into the living room. Chloe hears her offering him a cup of tea, adopting a much lighter tone than a second before. Then nothing for a while except for the sounds of the TV. There’s been a big fire somewhere in Essex, two firefighters have been killed. Another is still missing.

Chloe makes an excuse to go to bed early that night. She yawns from the sofa to make it seem convincing, not that anyone protests.

After she’s turned out the light in her room, she lies back in the darkness, the muffled sounds of the television creeping up through the house. She turns over on her pillow, once, twice, then sighs, switching on her bedside lamp. The duvet twists around her legs and she shakes it off. On the bedroom floor, she reaches for the box under her bed. It’s pushed all the way to the back wall, and her hand fishes for it in the dust and darkness. Her fingertips find the cardboard sides of it and she pulls it out from under the bed. The box is black, or at least it once was. Now it is scuffed and scarred, having travelled with Chloe for years. Inside it is filled with envelopes, each one of them named. She pulls out the newest looking one. She sits back against the bed frame, the cool of the wooden floorboards under the back of her knees, her feet on the rug. She opens the envelope and empties it into her lap. She hasn’t brought all the cuttings here, just a selection, in case she needs some reminders. The rest are back in her bedroom at Nan’s. She knows she will need to go back for them, but when she thinks of Nan’s house, she feels awkward and unsettled inside. She unfolds one photocopy after another, surprised how old photos that she had come to know so well now feel strange to her. She can’t remember which cuttings she’d brought, and so each that she unfurls is a surprise, although none offer new clues, not even from this vantage point.

Raised voices filter through the floor. Chloe stops, the cutting in her hand. She can hear Patrick.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, woman . . .’

She shuffles closer to the floorboards, pressing her ear to a warm one where she had been sitting to get closer to their conversation. She holds her breath, the wood between them stealing much of what’s being said in the living room, only tiny snippets floating up towards her.

Patrick continues: ‘. . . treating her like . . . turned up out of nowhere . . . know nothing about . . .’