Walking up their neat front garden, he paused at the front door. He raised his hand. Lowered it. Raised it again. He thought of their faces, the resentment in their eyes. He couldn’t do this; he had to go.

The door swung open.

“What are you doing here?” Harvey glared, his hand on the door frame, a man as neat as his garden with a meticulous comb-over and a smart sweatshirt.

“I… I need to talk about Natalie.”

“Why?”

“She left a note, Harvey. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”

Harvey took a step forward. Scott flinched away, certain for a mad second the man was going to punch him.

But he was doing a witness check. Scott had heard the phrase in a documentary he and Casey had watched. Snuggled up on the sofa, so in love it hurt.

A witness check was when criminals looked around to make sure nobody was watching. Harvey didn’t want anybody overhearing anything about his daughter. He didn’t want anybody seeing Scott. It was a crime, Scott being here.

“Come in,” Harvey snapped, “before Theresa gets home.”

Scott had teased Natalie about her mother’s name. Whenever she did something to upset Natalie, Scott would say, “Hey, don’t talk about Mother Theresa like that.” It was one of their old jokes, repeated many times over the years, and it always made her smile. Well, not always.

He followed Harvey; there were no photos of Natalie hanging from the walls in the hallway, or on the display cabinet in the living room. There was no sign of her at all.

Harvey didn’t offer to make Scott a cup of tea. He sat and gestured for Scott to take the opposite chair. “What did the note say?”

“I’ve got to say, Harvey, I thought you’d be more surprised.”

“I must apologise, profusely, for not living up to your expectations. In this note, did she apologise?”

“To who?”

Harvey looked at him with dead seriousness. There was no irony in his expression at all. “To God.”

Scott envied and hated him. To have such conviction. “No, she didn’t. And she didn’t need to. She could’ve said sorry to me. To you. To Theresa. To her friends. She doesn’t owe God anything.”

“That’s blasphemy.”

Scott shrugged. “I guess it is.”

“You’ve been in my home a minute, if that.”

“So?”

“You’re already wearing my patience thin. It’s been terribly difficult for me and my wife to move on. But, with a lot of prayer and patience, we’re slowly getting there. We could do without your disrespect.”

Harvey’s voice shook towards the end, his cheeks colouring red. Suddenly Scott saw him for what he was. A grieving father, a man who was dealing with his loss in the only way he knew how.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said. “I didn’t mean to disrespect you. I could’ve done this over the phone–”

“I can assure you, we would have preferred that. Theresa is due home in fifteen minutes. Please hurry up.”