It’s ten minutes before Maureen comes in, carrying a tray of three mugs of tea and a small plate of biscuits.

‘Do you have to have the TV on that loud, Patrick?’ Maureen says. ‘I swear you need to get your hearing checked.’

‘Huh?’ he replies from his armchair.

Maureen looks at Chloe and rolls her eyes. She sits down beside her on the sofa. As she does, Chloe gets a whiff of her perfume, a sweet leafy scent.

‘Are you sure you’re full?’ Maureen asks. ‘You don’t want anything more to eat?’

Patrick looks over quickly from the chair. ‘You never bloody ask me that.’

‘Nothing wrong with your hearing when I’m talking about food,’ Maureen says, and the two women smile to each other.

It doesn’t feel to Chloe like they’re acting now. She imagines how they’d look to an outsider, dotted around the living room, lit by the lampshade hanging from the ceiling rose. Ordinary, that’s how they must look. Chloe swallows down tea and feels a warm glow inside.

‘That’s a nice photograph,’ she says, pointing over to the sideboard.

Maureen glances up slowly as she sips her tea and smiles. ‘Angie,’ she says.

Chloe’s heart is thumping. ‘Who’s Angie?’

Immediately, she looks down into the milkiness of her tea, asking herself whether she made her question sound natural enough. But she’s got to get them talking, isn’t that why she’s here?

‘That’s our little girl, isn’t it, Pat?’ Maureen says.

He looks up from the television at Maureen, and then at Angie. His face softens on cue.

‘What’s she up to now?’ Chloe asks, this time going for a breezy tone. She hates herself for having to do it this way.

Maureen’s eyes dip; she takes a moment to compose herself. When she looks up it’s with an expression that appears mastered for moments like this.

‘We don’t know, love,’ she says. ‘She disappeared, when she was just a little girl.’

Maureen gets up and takes the framed photograph down from the sideboard, holding it in both hands. She smiles at it, wipes away an invisible layer of dust, then walks back and passes it to Chloe on the sofa.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Chloe says, taking the picture. That’s not a lie. She holds the photograph in her hands and although she’s looked at it – studied it – many, many times before, even on her old bedroom wall, this time it’s different; the weight of the glass and frame in her hands, the specks of dust that cling to it, the volume turned up just that bit too loud on the TV, all of it adds to the picture, just like she knew it would.

‘She’s beautiful,’ Chloe says. ‘Do you have any more photographs?’

‘Of Angie?’

Chloe swallows a little, then nods.

‘Oh, hundreds.’

‘Can I see them?’ Chloe asks.