There’s a pause as Chloe stares back, trying frantically to do the maths in her head, wondering what she’d got so wrong. She feels Patrick stop eating and put down his fork. Under the table, she crosses her ankles, putting her left heel down hard on top of her right toes until they burn. The pain helps her to focus.

‘Hmm-mmm,’ she nods, looking back down at her plate. ‘Yeah, quite old. I never knew my dad.’

That much is true.

Patrick looks up at her from the other side of the table. ‘Where did you grow up, Chloe?’ His tone isn’t as friendly as Maureen’s. Chloe feels the need to think before she speaks.

‘In town,’ she says, swallowing too quickly; the food hurts as it goes down. ‘Peterborough. Various places. Nan lived in Dogsthorpe.’

‘Oh, so did we,’ Maureen says, nudging Patrick.

‘Oh really?’ Chloe says, thinking she manages to make it sound realistic.

‘Yes, Chestnut Avenue. Do you know it?’

Chloe makes a point of looking up to the artex ceiling, furrowing her brow, and all the time inside she’s congratulating herself at how she’s making this appear, how she’s pulled it back round. ‘Er . . . I’m not sure . . .’

‘Oh, you must do,’ Maureen says. ‘It’s the big one, the one that crosses Central Avenue, with the shops.’

‘Oh yes,’ Chloe says, as if suddenly remembering. From the corner of her eye, she sees Patrick look back down at his plate. ‘Of course I know it, Nan used to take me to church there when I was little.’ She had been there, that wasn’t a lie.

‘Did she? Well I never . . . Patrick, did you hear that? Chloe only went to the same church.’

Patrick makes a sound from his chair.

‘Did you know Father Cunningham? No, he’s perhaps before your time, although . . . how old did you say you were, Chloe?’

‘Twenty-nine.’

‘That’s it, of course,’ Maureen says. She drifts back to her plate then, wiping a carrot round the willow pattern more times than is necessary. Chloe wonders if this is it. The moment they bring up Angie. Or is Chloe meant to ask? What is the etiquette? She thinks of the woman who had opened their front door to her in Chestnut Avenue just two weeks ago, her big gold hoop earrings. She pictures Maureen and Patrick handing over the keys to her and her snotty-nosed kids. How had she referred to Maureen? That was it, ‘the old lady who used to live here.’ Chloe looks across the table at her; she has a few frown lines on her face, no doubt carved from the worry of Angie’s disappearance, but there aren’t many crinkles around her eyes for a woman of her age. But then, what has she had to laugh about over these last twenty-five years?