Her hand hovers just around her own knee.

‘Well, it would be here now, but then . . .’

‘When?’ Maureen says, quickly. ‘Try and remember, Chloe.’

Chloe hears a car on the road outside; her eyes flicker to the window – not that she’d be able to see – but Maureen remains bolt upright in her chair, pleading with her eyes for more. Chloe starts speaking faster, in case it is Patrick arriving home.

‘I was little. The grass, then, it was . . . it was almost to here.’ She shows Maureen by making a line right across the middle of her neck. ‘And there were swings, yellow ones.’

Maureen lets go of Chloe’s hands just in time for the pair of them to hear for sure Patrick’s tyres crunching on the pebble drive. A little gasp escapes Maureen’s mouth.

The car door slams.

‘Well, Patrick . . . he was there one minute and then the next . . .’

‘Gone?’ Maureen asks.

‘Well, yeah, gone . . . I, I don’t know . . .’

Maureen gets up from her chair and almost floats across the kitchen just in time to see Patrick heading from the car past the window by the sink.

‘I don’t know what it means,’ Chloe says.

‘What it means?’ asks Maureen, her face a wide and brilliant smile that takes two decades off the woman standing before Chloe. ‘What it means is that your memory is coming back. Don’t you see? The park is where Angie disappeared from. I can still see it that day: long grass – just like you said – yellow swings. That’s where you were with Dad when . . . when . . . oh Chloe! Oh Angie!’

‘So I did disappear from the park?’ Chloe asks.

‘Yes! Yes,’ Maureen says. Half laughs, half cries. She’s wiping those same tears away when Patrick comes through the back door. He stops when he sees Chloe there. He hesitates, one foot suspended above the step. He puts it down slowly, then steps into the kitchen, looking between Chloe and his wife.

‘Oh Patrick,’ Maureen says, going over and wrapping her arms around him. He pats his wife’s back, looking straight at Chloe as he does. She looks away.

‘Oh Patrick, you’re not going to believe this . . . come in, come in, sit down . . .’

She directs him to his chair; he sits down opposite Chloe. He looks again, between them.

‘What’s going on, Mo?’ he says.

‘It’s Angie, Pat – Chloe . . . oh, whatever.’ She tosses her hands up, offering them to the air. ‘She’s remembering, it’s working, it’s . . . it’s all coming back to her.’

Chloe glances up at Patrick in time, she’s sure, to see his eyes narrow a bit.