Chloe quickly takes a step back from the girl as her mother turns around in time to see the mess she makes as it pours out of the box. The woman sighs into her phone, exasperated, and hangs up. Then strides over to her daughter and chastises her. Chloe takes some Weetabix from the shelf and moves on with her basket. Another parent who doesn’t realize how lucky she is.

Chloe continues shopping, aware of the lone figure she cuts among all the others with their loaded trolleys. In the cosmetics aisle she is still thinking of the little girl. Distracted, she throws a tube of denture paste into her basket. It’s only when she finally reaches the checkout that she remembers she doesn’t need to buy it anymore.

‘I picked this up by mistake,’ she explains.

The cashier nods without speaking.

Chloe is about to tell her about Nan, to explain, but then she notices her name badge: Sharon Kyle.

‘Kyle,’ Chloe says. ‘That’s an unusual surname.’

The woman looks up. ‘Is it?’

Chloe can’t help herself.

‘Are you related to a Maureen and Patrick Kyle?’

The woman puts a bunch of bananas on the scales and looks up to the ceiling. ‘Nope, no relation.’

‘Oh, OK, I just thought . . .’

Chloe carries on packing her shopping in plastic orange bags.

She tries again: ‘They had a daughter, Angela?’

The woman shakes her head.

Chloe pays and leaves, convincing herself that they must be related somehow. She asks herself again what might have happened if this were a detective show? She stops still on the pavement, even thinks of going back. Surely a detective wouldn’t have let a lead like that go? If she’d been a relative, Chloe could have told her that she was revisiting the case for new clues; the woman might even have offered to help, perhaps given her an interview.

As she walks to the bus stop, she has a fantasy of her name appearing alongside a newspaper article. She goes over the headlines in her mind, before settling on a triumphant Angela Kyle reunited with parents. She’s smiling as she gets on the bus. She arranges her shopping at her feet, and wonders whether the police interviews of the time extended to wider family and friends. Aren’t most missing children taken by someone they know? She’s sure she’s heard that before. She takes out her notepad from her bag and makes a note to look up that statistic. She swaps her notepad and pen for a cutting from the Angie file. She opens it out on her lap.

WE’RE STILL WAITING FOR ANGIE

Below it two faces, weathered by a decade of grief, Patrick and Maureen sit holding a framed photograph of Angie between them.