He smiled. ‘She was ace. She was funny and sweet but kind of … fierce, you know? I was only ten, and I guess I’m biased, but I don’t think you meet many people like her. She was so passionate about stuff, she’d go off on all these rallies and marches, save the whale, women’s rights, you name it. Drove Mum and Dad mad because she’d never just stay still and get on with her school work. I was only a kid, but even then I admired her for it, how principled she was, how sure she was about what was right and wrong. And she was a free spirit, you know?’ He sighed and rubbed his face. ‘Maybe our house was too restrictive for her and she wanted her freedom. Who knows? Maybe that’s why she went.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Clara had said quietly. ‘I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for you all.’

He got up, crossed the room to pull a book down from its shelf and handed it to her. It was a thin volume of children’s poems. T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. ‘She gave me this a few months before she left,’ he told her. ‘She used to read it to me when I was a kid. It was …’ he stopped. ‘Well, anyway. That’s kind of all I have left of her.’

Reverently, Clara had opened it and read aloud the message written on the flyleaf. ‘“For Mungojerrie, from Rumpelteazer. Love you Kiddo. Always, E xx” ‘Mungojerrie?’ Clara had queried, and he’d smiled.

‘They’re the names of the cats in one of the poems – her favourite one.’

He’d been silent for a while before saying, ‘Anyway, it’s all in the past now,’ and he’d taken the book from her hands and pulled her towards him and started kissing her again, to stop her questions, she’d sensed. Whenever she’d tried to bring Emily up after that, he’d simply shrug and change the subject until eventually she’d given up, though she’d found herself thinking about her often, the missing sister of her boyfriend who’d walked away from home one day, never to be heard from again.

Now, with sudden decisiveness she said to Mac, ‘I’m going to drive over there.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘To Suffolk? How long will that take?’

She looked around for her keys and bag. ‘An hour and a half tops. At least I’ll be doing something. I can’t just sit here waiting for him, I feel like I’m going mad. And I think you’re right – I think that’s where he’ll be. He’s so close to his mum and dad. And if he has gone there because he’s freaked out by the emails, I’d prefer to talk to him face to face.’