At night, when she has managed to escape to the sanctuary that is her bedroom, Chloe pulls out her own dusty archive where she now keeps the photograph that Maureen gave her. She has scanned it for clues and each time returns to the haunting face of Patrick, unable to pinpoint what about it unnerves her so much. At first she had thought this was a simple case of bringing Angie home, that however ridiculous it might have sounded, her fresh eye on the case could have brought some answers for these shattered parents. But more often these days her curiosity is replaced with a looming sense of dread about what really happened, and the closer she gets to Maureen, the more protective she feels towards her. But who exactly does she need to protect her from?

She glances at Patrick from the passenger seat.

‘Another lovely day,’ she says.

‘Yeah.’ Patrick stares straight ahead at the road.

Silence.

‘I had the weirdest dream last night,’ Chloe says. She leaves it hanging there, but Patrick doesn’t bite. Maureen would. She goes on, curiosity gnawing at her insides.

‘It felt so real, more like a memory,’ she adds.

Still nothing. Chloe knows if this were Maureen beside her, meaning would already have been derived from every detail of this supposed dream. She swallows. The car hits a cat’s eye and her stomach turns over.

‘I was in a park . . . it felt so familiar.’

‘Oh yeah?’ he says, face straight ahead, too hard to read.

‘Yeah, it was a play park, just a little one. It was surrounded by tall trees and long grass and nearby, there was a lake.’

Patrick’s hands change position on the steering wheel.

‘You were there,’ she says, venturing further away from safety. ‘It was actually just the two of us.’

He laughs a little. ‘Dreams are strange things, ent they?’

‘Yes, but this one, it felt . . . different,’ she says. ‘Like I said, more like a memory. I was on the swings and you were there, you were pushing me, or I was asking you to . . . it’s all a bit fuzzy. It jumped around, the way dreams do.’ She wishes that she could open the window, but she continues: ‘The swings, they were yellow, and the ground wasn’t covered in woodchip – not like you see at parks now – it was a concrete floor. There was a car park just nearby and I saw you. I watched you as you walked over to it, and then . . . and then suddenly, you were gone.’

Patrick’s knuckles whiten. She’s describing the park as it was that day, as she had seen it in the cuttings. He knows it, she knows it. She needs him to talk, open up, like he did that day in the kitchen.

‘Yeah, well, don’t pay too much attention to dreams,’ Patrick says. ‘I tell Maureen the same. Just your subconscious playing tricks on you, like.’