‘I’m just . . . I’m just going to find some biscuits in the kitchen,’ Chloe tells the room, but it’s only the detective that looks up and nods. Maureen and Patrick still cling on to one another as if they are each lifebuoys and they are trying desperately not to drown in this ocean of grief.

In the kitchen, the two uniformed officers look up when she walks past them to open the back door. The windows are filled with steam which quickly starts to shrink as the cool air rushes in. At the back door she inhales lungfuls of the cold Fen night. She thinks of the recreation room at Park House, of the residents who spend hours looking out onto the garden, all the way down to the copse at the end of the sloping lawn. She has looked out onto that copse herself. Could it really be true, that the whole time Nan has been in Park House, Chloe has been unknowingly watching over Angie’s grave?

From the kitchen, as she opens a cupboard to find the biscuit tin, she hears Maureen asking more questions and the detective answering her carefully.

‘And what about the other missing person?’

‘I’m sorry?’ the detective says.

‘You said that they found Angie when they were searching for someone else. Did they find them? God knows, I wouldn’t want someone else to suffer like we have all these years.’

Chloe finds the biscuit tin and takes out a small plate from the cupboard. On it she arranges bourbons, custard creams, digestives, fanning them out in a semi-circle. She can hear the detective consulting with her colleague about the other missing person.

‘I don’t think we have much information, except that she was found and taken to hospital. Is that right, Pete?’

When he speaks his voice is louder and clearer than his colleague’s, weaving its way across the living room, round the door frame and through to the kitchen where Chloe stands arranging the biscuits.

‘Yes, it was an elderly lady who went missing from Park House.’

Chloe stops as she returns the packets to the tin. She can hear him flicking through his notebook in the living room.

‘Yes, that’s right, IC1 female, eighty-five years old, taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia . . . I’m afraid we don’t have any update on her condition.’

Chloe’s heart beats hard in her chest, the packets of biscuits fall from her hand. She’s already out of the kitchen into the hall, running up the stairs. She hears Maureen and Patrick, the detectives in the living room, but she runs into her room, slamming the door shut behind her. She pulls her phone from her coat pocket. Switches it on. Waits for it to light up.

‘Come on, come on,’ she says as she clutches it in both hands.