Jess’s face falls and she slopes back upstairs. Maybe I should say yes. But then Charlie will want to have Kieran over and it will be chaos, with no sleep for anyone. Although… I could also invite Kate and Shaun round for dinner. That way, I’ll get to meet Shaun too, and I can do some more digging. I haul myself off the sofa and close the lounge door again. Matt will be home soon. I don’t have much time to get back to what I was about to do before Jess interrupted me.

I open Facebook on my phone and tap Kate’s name in. But of course there are hundreds of people called Kate Morris. I narrow my search down by place, starting with London and then trying Wareham. I feel a thrill of excitement when her photo finally pops up. Annoyingly, her profile is set to ‘private’, so I send a friend request, realising that it could be ages until she accepts – if indeed she even does accept. She might not want me to see her page, or maybe she’s someone who hardly checks her social media.

My fears are unfounded – almost straight away my phone pings and a notification pops up that Kate Morris has accepted my friend request. Facebook asks me if I’d like to wave to her. No, I would not. Instead, I click on her profile and start scrolling through her photos, hoping she’s the sort of person who puts up pictures of her kids. I needn’t have worried.

There aren’t too many recent ones, but as I page back a few years, there are plenty. My heart skips as I see picture after picture of Bella. And the more I stare at them, the more I’m convinced that I’m staring at photos of my daughter. Photos of Holly. Of when she was ten years old. Eight years old. Seven. Six. And in the pictures where she’s with the rest of the Morrises, she sticks out like a sore thumb. Her warm skin tone and dark hair are nothing like her parents’ and siblings’ colouring. It’s crazy that no one’s said anything about it before – although maybe they have. And those green eyes – she’s an absolute beauty.