It’s good to hear Pete’s voice, though he sounds older than he did before. Before . . . what? I’m not quite sure when the watershed point was. When my mother died, or some point before? I’ve missed out on more than just Carrie by chasing every news story around the globe. But Carrie has clearly brought him up to speed—I spend at least the first ten minutes of the call dissuading him from getting on a plane, trying to reassure him that he needn’t worry, that I’m fine, that Carrie’s fine, that we are keeping ourselves safe.

Stay safe, Jonathan would say. But Jonathan hasn’t got on a plane. He hasn’t even offered. We spoke last night, a snatched conversation given it was still his working day in DC. He’s horrified, of course. I thought he might at least offer to come, even if that offer was based on a calculation that I would tell him to stay put. But no. There were things I wanted to say but he had to get off the phone, and I looked at my silent Blackberry for several heartbeats after he hung up, thinking that every thought unuttered, every sentence unsaid, moves us further apart. Our DNA cannot handle the strain. Already I see it like a fraying rope, the liberated ends of the broken fibers swaying gently in any breath of breeze.

“When will you hear?” Pete asks. I know he means about the identity of the bones. It has become like a Schrödinger’s cat experiment in my head. Right now the bones are both my father’s, and not my father’s; both possibilities exist simultaneously. Even though whichever outcome does in fact come to pass is already determined, has possibly been determined for twenty-seven years, it will somehow only come into effect at the point that Detective Laws—Bryn—calls me. Until then my father is both alive and dead.

“A day or two more. It depends on how busy the labs are. A current murder would take precedence over this.” New bones, with flesh and dried blood on them. As these must have been once upon a time, regardless of who they once belonged to.

“I suppose that’s fair.” I can picture him tugging on one of his long-lobed ears. “I expect you can think of little else.”