Conway threw her apple core. She had a good arm; it skimmed long and low between the trees, smashed into a bush with a rattle that sent a couple of small birds panicking upwards. She said, ‘And I think something’s fucked up Selena’s head. And I don’t believe in coincidences.’

She pulled out her phone, nodded at my apple. ‘Finish that. I’m gonna check my messages, then we move.’

Still giving the orders, but her tone had changed. I’d passed the test, or we had: the click was there.

Your dream partner grows in the back of your mind, secret, like your dream girl. Mine grew up with violin lessons, floor-to-high-ceiling books, red setters, a confidence he took for granted and a dry sense of humour no one but me would get. Mine was everything that wasn’t Conway, and I would’ve bet hers was everything that wasn’t me. But the click was there. Maybe, just for a few days, we could be good enough for each other.

I shoved the rest of my apple in my coffee cup, found my mobile too. ‘Sophie,’ Conway told me, phone to her ear. ‘No prints on anything. The lads in Documents say the words came out of a book, medium quality, probably fifty to seventy years old going by the typeface and the paper. From the focus on the photo, Chris wasn’t the main subject; he was just in the background, someone cropped out the rest. Nothing on the location yet, but she’s running comparisons with photos from the original investigation.’

When I turned on my phone, it beeped: a text. Conway’s head came round.

A number I didn’t recognise. The text was so far from what I was expecting, took my eyes a second to grab hold of it.

Joanne kept the key to the boarders wing/school door taped inside the Life of St Therese, third year common room bookshelf. It could be gone now but it was there a year ago.

I held the phone out to Conway.

Her face went focused. She held her mobile next to mine, tapped and flicked fast at the screen.

Said, ‘The number’s none of our girls, or it wasn’t last year. None of Chris’s friends, either.’

All their numbers, still on her phone a year later. No thread cut, not even the finest.

I said, ‘I’ll text back. Ask who it is.’

Conway thought. Nodded.

Hi – thanks for that. Sorry, I don’t have everyone’s numbers, who’s this?

I passed it to Conway. She read it three times, gnawing apple-juice sticky off her thumb. Said, ‘Go.’

I hit Send.

Neither of us said it; no need. If the text was true, then Joanne and at least one other girl, probably more, had had a way to get out of the school the night Chris Harper was killed. One of them could have seen something.