It would make sense, and that makes Chloe panic. She feels rattled inside, though she stays calm. ‘My social worker offered many times to get my file out of the archives, to show me all the paperwork but . . . well, there’s no point in living in the past, is there? I’d rather focus on the present.’

She almost thinks she’s gone too far now. She’s strayed too much from the script, she knows that, but the temptation that fizzes inside makes her feel more alive than she has done in years. It always does.

Chloe dips her eyes back towards her plate. Maureen must understand from this tiny gesture that she doesn’t want to talk anymore.

Maureen finishes off her food then puts down her cutlery and stands up. ‘I’d better get this kitchen cleared up,’ she says.

‘I’ll help—’

‘No, don’t you even think of it, Chloe. You go on into the living room with Patrick, make yourself comfy in front of the television. Knowing him, he’ll have one of those CSI things on the telly, but we’ll watch it together, the three of us. I only need a moment to clear up in here.’

TWENTY-THREE

Maureen is more than a moment, though. And Chloe sits stiffly on her hands on the sofa waiting for her. She’s aware of clinking pots and pans in the kitchen even if Patrick is oblivious.

‘Do you think I should go and help?’ she asks.

‘Hmm?’ Patrick wafts away her suggestion. ‘She’s used to it, you sit yourself down.’

There’s a detective series on the TV – just as Maureen had predicted. The fictional police chief is going over what they know so far about the case, what questions still need answering. Chloe imagines writing more of her own findings into her pale blue book later this evening: a description of the plates, the food, who sits where around the kitchen table, the way Patrick chews with his mouth open, the way Maureen fixes her hair – a nervous tic perhaps? How many detectives would want to be her right now? There have been moments, just odd split seconds, when she’s felt that flicker of guilt, when Maureen filled her in on some detail about their life that she knew already. She had to remind herself there is a higher purpose to her being here, perhaps something that Maureen and Patrick might thank her for one day.

Across the other side of the living room, Patrick is absorbed in the TV drama, his feet up on the pouffe, his fingers tapping on the remote control every so often, utterly unaware of Chloe watching him. She remembers that cutting then, the one from when he was arrested. It’s hard to imagine him now being bundled into a police car, kept in a dark, dank cell underneath the police station. She glances over her shoulder and wills Maureen to appear from the kitchen.