Chloe hands a mug from the tray to the officer in Patrick’s chair. He thanks her with a tight smile, everyone unsure of how they are supposed to behave after this bombshell has swept through the room. The detectives do a good job of seeming awkward, but surely they are used to this? Surely they do this all the time? She thinks about the reporters at the newspaper who were often sent out on death knocks just hours after someone had put an announcement in the newspaper. The receptionists would ring up and tell the news desk if it was a sudden death, or a young age, and a reporter would be dispatched to their home. They’d return to the office the same as they’d left, with a breezy demeanour, their priority only to empty their shorthand pads onto their screens in time for the next day’s paper. Perhaps they had sat in living rooms like this, an intruder into someone else’s most personal moments. Chloe’s job was only ever to file away what they had written. She’d never thought of the reporters’ lives outside of the office, of how close they were to both life and death.

Patrick sniffs and shakes his head when Chloe offers him tea. She puts a mug down in front of Maureen, who thanks her with a small voice, and the detective places her cup beside her feet.

Chloe takes her place at the very edge of the room in the hope of not being noticed. She’d always been good at fading into the background, of disappearing into the wallpaper. Over the years she likes to think she’s perfected the art of camouflage.

Patrick sits forward, balancing his elbows on his knees. He holds his head in his hands and then looks up.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘it’s just, well, it’s a shock, you know? After all these years.’

The detective nods, and glancing at Maureen again, Patrick reaches for his wife’s hand. Chloe notices how she squeezes it in return. He’s right, how could he have let go of her hand twenty-five years ago?

‘I don’t . . . well, I don’t quite know what to ask first, like,’ Patrick says. ‘I mean how . . . how was she found?’

The detective takes a sip of her tea and then holds the mug between two hands.

‘Another person was reported missing and it was actually during the search for her that Angela’s remains were found.’

Patrick nods. ‘I see . . . and where? I mean, where was she found?’

‘Not far from the park where she went missing.’

Maureen looks up quickly and a tiny sob escapes from her mouth.

‘You mean, she’s been there all this time, out in the cold?’ Maureen asks, her voice small, child-like.