‘I was at home,’ she says, ‘in Chestnut Avenue, you know, our old house? Patrick had taken her out, to the park. He was with her when she . . . well, you know, when she disappeared.’

Chloe nods.

‘He was a broken man, Chloe. Truly broken by it. The police could have done more too, Patrick knew it. But we were in their hands, we had to rely on them that they were doing all they could but . . . well, they called off the search that first night when it got dark, can you believe it?’

Maureen shakes her head as Chloe thinks back to those terrible hours when Nan was missing. Yes, she could believe it, especially back then.

‘But Patrick, he had to be strong for me, see?’ Maureen continues.

‘Did you blame him? I mean, was it hard?’

‘Never,’ she says quickly.

Chloe looks at her sideways.

‘What was the use? Especially when I saw how it had torn him in two. We had to stick together. That kind of thing happening, it tears most couples apart. We needed each other. I needed him.’

Chloe thinks of the cuttings she’d read about his arrest. She’s surprised to hear Maureen criticising the police investigation – Patrick had praised them for looking at every line of inquiry so thoroughly. She hears his quotes again in her head.

‘But if it broke Patrick too, why did he think you were hanging on to the past? Why didn’t he want to hang on to things too?’

Maureen shrugs. ‘People deal with grief in different ways,’ she says. She looks up then, across the fields to the approaching crossroads. ‘It’s left back to the village, or right takes us all the way out on the Wisbech road,’ she says.

Chloe indicates left with her eyes and intuitively Maureen follows her. The road is busier and they’re forced to break off from one another to walk in single file as cars whizz by. Chloe watches Maureen from behind; the warmth of her still lingers, tucked in the curve of her elbow. Soon a grass verge curves up from the tarmac, a well-worn path within it. She thinks for a second of the carpet walkway to the archive at work and feels a longing for her old desk, the safety that office routine had offered. No wonder she still imitates it each day. She wonders how Alec is managing, whether the new computer systems have arrived, whether her beloved archive has lost its texture, whether it has turned yet from paper to metal to machine.