‘Yes, that’s it. Are you going to help them find her?’ Nan looks up from her hand of cards and Chloe feels that seed of an idea that she’s been tending unfurl a little further. Nan’s blue eyes are bright. She thinks of Maureen and Patrick Kyle, and wonders whether a disease like dementia would grant them the gift of living in a world where Angie is still alive.

‘Do you think I should?’ Chloe asks.

Nan breaks into a great big smile. ‘Oh yes,’ she says, reaching out and taking her hand in hers, cards fluttering down to the floor. ‘Those poor parents.’

‘OK then,’ she says, ‘I’ll find her.’

Nan smiles.

‘It’ll mean I’ll be busy at the office, I won’t be able to visit so often.’

Nan looks up. ‘What could be more important than finding a lost child?’ she says.

Nan studies her then, for that second longer until Chloe looks away. Then, suddenly Nan looks down at the floor.

‘Oh, I’ve dropped all my cards,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘How are we going to finish our game now?’

‘It’s OK, Nan,’ she says, ‘you’d won already.’

Her cheeks pinken, complementing her blouse.

‘Had I?’ she says, clasping her hands together. ‘How wonderful.’

Chloe puts the cards away in the packet as Nan chats to one of her new friends. She walks across the room to place them back in a drawer when the view from the window catches her eye. She wanders over and stands in front of the huge window; another resident is sitting in a recliner beside it, her wrinkly hands on the lace doilies that cover the arms of the chair.

‘I took my Sarah there the other day,’ the old woman says, seemingly to the glass.

‘Sorry?’ Chloe says.

‘Ferry Meadows,’ she says. ‘My little girl. She did have a lovely time on the swings.’

Chloe smiles at her. Someone else trapped inside a memory.

‘Oh, right, lovely.’ She starts towards Nan but then she has an idea. She glances back out the window; it’s a nice day, the sun dipping in and out of the clouds, casting shadows across the lake. It’s windy, crisp, spring starting its annual and inevitable tussle with winter.

When she reaches Nan she puts a hand on her shoulder. ‘I tell you what, Nan, I’m just going for a quick walk. I’ll leave you with your friend and see you back here in half an hour.’

‘OK, dear,’ she replies.

As Chloe walks away, she hears Nan say to her new friend, ‘What a nice young lady.’