We got lucky once, he thinks, but maybe we won’t be so lucky this time around. He feels a sudden lurch of fear in his stomach which he does his best to ignore.

As the first 10 miles slip past, James and Matt make small talk. They catch up on James’ career at PWC, Matt’s job at the paper, girlfriends, friends, people from school and what they’re doing now, and pretty much anything that saves them from talking about the thing they’re going off to do. The thing they have to do.

After they run out of things to talk about, they sit in silence for a while.

It’s James that finally breaks it.

‘Are you sure?’ he asks.

Matt glances over at him. He’s looking straight ahead at the road in front, and his expression is impossible to read.

Matt pats the brown bag on his lap.

‘Sure,’ he says.

James nods, and they drive on in silence. As the road unfolds ahead of them Matt leans back against the headrest and stares out of the window. He feels the weight of the bag in his lap and finds his mind drifting back to the winter of last year. January 2014.

What was it he’d seen scrawled in that letter? The one he’d found in the study upstairs? I know it’s you.

Yes, that was it.

I know it’s you.

Matt closes his eyes.

The GPS says they’ll reach Rutmoor just after midday.

2014

Matt turned the collar of his coat up against the rain.

He was striding down a long avenue lined with near-identical brick houses, screwing his face in the wind. Tree branches crashed together above him, shaking beneath a marble-grey January sky.

He felt the brown bag slung over his shoulder, unconsciously patted the front of it for the shape of his umbrella, then stopped himself when he realised he’d left it at home. That was okay, though. In fact he thought it might play in his favour.

A third of the way down the road Matt took shelter under a bus stop and wiped his eyes. He pulled his iPhone out of his pocket and bashed in the code. Opening his Notes app, he re-read the very top item for perhaps the fifth time since he’d got off the train half an hour before.

49, Willow Av.

He glanced up and stared through the murky, rain-soaked glass of the bus shelter at the house nearest to him. A little red door was just visible through the downpour, but Matt couldn’t make out the number. Straightening his collar against his neck once more, he sighed and stepped out into the rain.

He found the right place a few moments later.