More recently, she’d begun to question whether they’d been right all along and that she was incapable of knowing bad from good in the people she allowed into her life, especially the males of the species.

But what of Ailsa? Would there be anything left at Forrigan to help her understand what the girl had been really like?

Peering in at one of the front windows, she could make out a kitchen that closely resembled the one at Beanach. Greg’s place, she suspected, hadn’t seen much change since he’d lived there as a small boy. She’d found it endearingly quaint on first view. The kitchen range, with a couple of chairs alongside. The big table that looked as though it had been fashioned at least a half-century before.

Forrigan, it appeared, wasn’t that different.

Walking round, peering in at the windows, she had a sense that Ailsa’s parents had simply left, just as Kath had suggested, not taking anything of their life here with them. Perhaps because the memory would be too painful.

Keen to enter now for a proper look, she finally discovered that the scullery window at the back might be opened with a little effort on her part, which she set about doing.

Scrambling inside, she dropped down from the draining board and entered the kitchen proper. Now behind thick stone walls, most outside sounds masked, she breathed in the stale air and sense of abandonment, aptly symbolized by the two mugs left on the table, as though Mr and Mrs Cummings, having eventually accepted that their daughter was never coming back, had simply risen and left themselves.

The feeling of Ailsa’s late presence grew even stronger when, on climbing the narrow staircase, she discovered the girl’s bedroom.

The made-up bed, her chosen photos remaining on the walls, her make-up on the small dressing table. A photograph of Ailsa, she assumed, pouting at the camera, with what looked like the carving of the green woman in the background.

Assuming the police had searched this room after her disappearance, then her parents had made certain to restore it afterwards.

Clearing out people’s belongings after they’d died must be one of the hardest jobs ever, she thought, and the Cummings didn’t even know if their daughter was alive or dead. Maybe, by not stripping the room, they’d been committed to believing that Ailsa was still alive somewhere.

A hope that was about to be shattered, it seemed.

Joanne thought of her old bedroom at home and how quickly her parents had removed all evidence of her from it. In all honesty, she’d been grateful for that, because, on the odd night she did stay there, she wasn’t required to stare at memories of her teenage self again.

Studying the collage of photographs, she noted one in particular.