‘It’s nothing,’ Maureen says, looking down at the tablecloth and running the seam of it round her index finger. ‘Well, I was going to say, I remember when you . . . well . . . I remember when Angie started school, there wasn’t a day when she didn’t come home with something – when you didn’t come home with something.’ She says the last bit as if it’s a new dress that she’s still trying on for size.

Chloe looks down into her lap. All she can see, all she can hear, is him. She looks up again quickly, into Maureen’s trusting face, just inches from hers. She wants to tell herself that there is enough between them, that even if Maureen knew for sure that she wasn’t Angie, that she would still keep her, that they’d still have each other.

‘What is it, love?’ Maureen says suddenly. ‘You really don’t seem yourself.’

Chloe reaches for Maureen’s hand. The two parts of her heart pulling away from each other. Had she come here to deceive? That wasn’t what she had thought she was doing. And yet, she can’t tell the truth.

‘It’s just . . . it’s just . . .’

Maureen takes her hand and holds it.

‘What is it, Chloe, love? Has something come back to you, is this what it is? Have you remembered? Is that why your head is hurting?’

Chloe clutches her temples, because now it really is hurting. She flashes back for a moment, to the car, to the conversation with Patrick. Snapshots race through her mind. She has to tell her. She has to tell her. But Chloe’s uncertainty – or perhaps hope – that she’s still got something wrong nags at her. Worse is a fear that Maureen hasn’t been honest either, that she knows Patrick wasn’t at the park that day. But hadn’t she run through that thought earlier? Hadn’t she discarded it as impossible?

‘It’s just I was telling Patrick this morning, about a dream I had.’

Maureen shuffles closer; she’s on the edge of her chair.

‘It was different – to others, I mean.’

Maureen nods. She feels her squeeze her hand, as if to help her go on.

‘It felt . . . it felt like I’d been there before, and, well . . .’

‘Been where, love?’

‘A park.’

Maureen blanches. Chloe tries to read what she can from the look on her face, but it’s blank. Why? Because she knows nothing, or she wants to make it look like she does? Chloe reaches for her head again.

‘I was in a park, and it was only me and Patrick, and the grass, it was long . . .’

Maureen sits straighter. ‘What length?’ she says.

‘What?’

‘The grass. I mean, here?’ She points to ankle height. ‘Here?’ She moves up to over her knees.

Chloe thinks of the picture, the one she had studied that morning back at Nan’s. Thank God.