Downstairs the lightness has returned to Maureen’s voice and Chloe hears her own name being mentioned.

‘A lodger?’ the stranger’s voice asks. She sounds surprised, curious – shocked, even – which piques Chloe’s own curiosity.

She decides then to recommence her descent down the stairs, trying as best she can to make her footsteps sound natural, not as if she’s been eavesdropping.

‘Here she is,’ Maureen says.

The woman twists round from her seat with a smile that falls – just a little – when she sets eyes on Chloe.

‘Chloe, this is my oldest friend, Josie,’ Maureen says, introducing the pair. ‘Josie, this is our new lodger.’

Chloe holds out her hand and Josie takes it tentatively. She’s small and dumpy, with grey hair cut close to her head. Behind the years that she’s grown into, Chloe can see that she was once a very beautiful woman. She wears a silk scarf around her neck and drops her gaze from Chloe to adjust it.

‘How do you do?’ Josie says.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Chloe replies.

Chloe crosses the kitchen to stand beside Maureen at the sink. This stranger’s appearance at Elm House makes her feel more at home here herself, and she gleans some satisfaction from the way that Josie studies her and Maureen standing side by side. In the end it’s Josie who looks away first.

As Maureen makes tea, she tells Josie how Chloe saw the advert in the newsagent’s window. She fills the kettle and describes the first time she walked in the kitchen door. She drops a teabag into each mug and explains how easily she’s settled in, as if she’s always been here. As she adds the milk she raves about how nice it is to have someone to fuss over again, and Chloe smiles and blushes on cue, all the time knowing she is playing her part flawlessly.

But after a while, as the three women sip their tea, something about the way Josie watches her starts to unnerve Chloe. The way Josie’s eyes flicker across her while Maureen continues chatting oblivious. In many ways Josie would be the perfect witness to interview. She wonders if Maureen and Josie would have been friends when Angie disappeared. If so, did detectives speak to her at the time? What might Josie have told them?

Maureen doesn’t appear to have noticed that her friend has remained silent the whole time she has been talking.

‘. . . and the most incredible thing is, how much does she remind you of our Angie?’

Josie had been about to sip from her mug, but it stops mid-air.

‘I’m sorry?’ Josie says.

‘Chloe,’ Maureen says, as she sits down beside her at the table. ‘I was saying how much she reminds me of Angie, doesn’t she you?’