"I hope you've had your shots," Rafe said. "What do you want me to do with this?"

"Don't tempt me," Lexie told him, and bounced into shot, heading over towards the cupboards.

She moved lighter than me, small steps tipped up on the balls of her feet, and girlier: her curves were no more impressive than mine, obviously, but she had a dancing little swing that made you notice them. Her hair had been longer then, just long enough to pull into two curly bunches over her ears, and she was wearing jeans and a tight cream-colored sweater a lot like one I used to have. I still had no idea whether we would have liked each other, if we had had the chance to meet--probably not--but that was beside the point, so irrelevant that I didn't even know how to think about it.

"Wow," Lexie said, peering into one of the cupboards. "What is it? Is it alive?"

"It may well have been," Daniel said, leaning over her shoulder. "A very long time ago."

"I think it's the other way around," said Abby. "It didn't use to be alive, but it is now. Has it evolved opposable thumbs yet?"

"I miss my flat," said Justin lugubriously, from a safe distance.

"You do not," Lexie told him. "Your flat was three foot square and made from reconstituted cardboard and you hated it."

"My flat didn't have unidentified life-forms."

"Whatsisname upstairs with the sound system who thought he was Ali G."

"I think it's some kind of fungus," Daniel said, inspecting the cupboard with interest.

"That does it," said Rafe. "I am not recording this. When we're old and gray and wallowing in nostalgia, our first memories of our home should not be defined by fungus. How do I turn this thing off?"

A second of linoleum; then the screen went black.

"We've got forty-two clips like that," Frank told me, hitting buttons, "all between about one minute and five minutes long. Add in, say, another week's worth of intensive interviews with her associates, and I'm pretty sure we'll have enough information to put together our very own DIY Lexie Madison. Assuming, that is, that you want to."

He froze the frame on Lexie, head turned over her shoulder to say something, eyes bright and mouth half open in a smile. I looked at her, soft-edged and flickering like she might fly off the screen at any second, and I thought: I used to be like that. Sure-footed and invulnerable, up for anything that came along. Just a few months ago, I used to be like that.

"Cassie," Frank said softly. "Your call."

For what seemed like a long time, I thought about saying no. Back to DV: the standard Monday crop of the weekend's aftermath, too many bruises and high-necked sweaters and sunglasses indoors, the regulars filing charges on their boyfriends and withdrawing them by Tuesday night, Maher sitting beside me like a big pink ham in a sweater and sniggering predictably every time we pulled a case with foreign names.