There. Her eye had gone past it then instantly been drawn back. She realized she was breathing more deeply, her fight-or-flight reflex set off just by seeing the words on paper. Anna Lassiter was the name of the purchaser, at 16 Leyton Gardens, with a postcode that put it in Kentish Town. Sixteen flowers, laid on, Leyton, she ran a mnemonic around her head a few times, piling associations on the address and the post code. She should tell Costain this too, have two brains remembering it. She looked over to him. He’d seen that she’d found something.

No. Still no. She still could not trust him.

She slammed the book closed and grabbed her notebook, ripped out a page, pulled out a pen and wrote the information down before he could arrive beside her. She folded the paper up and shoved it into her waistcoat breast pocket.

She had it. She knew the location of the object that could bring her dad back to life.

It made her excited. But it didn’t make her happy.

She headed for the door; Costain followed at a run.

*   *   *

He caught up with her in the Turbine Hall. ‘So what’s the plan? Are we going straight there?’

She didn’t want him going with her. She didn’t want to tell him that. She felt emotionally exhausted, and she was aware of a terrible numbness that had taken hold of some part of her personality like an anaesthetic. Besides, though she really did want to go straight to the address and at least look at where this precious object might be, it did make more sense to use all the tools at her disposal to learn everything she could about the place beforehand.

She turned to look at Costain and saw that he was prepared for disappointment here, prepared to be disbelieved, as he’d been doubted all his life.

She put her hands on both sides of his face and kissed him.

He kissed her back. Then he stopped. ‘Lisa,’ he said, ‘we have to talk about—’

‘No,’ she said, ‘we don’t.’

*   *   *

She took him home. He kept on kissing her as she slowly pushed him up against the wall, but he was not going to go any further. His expression said he wouldn’t let himself unless she gave him some sort of signal. She took his hand and put it not on her breast as she’d thought to do, but on second thoughts, between her legs. They stood there awkwardly, him looking at her, still questioning, even at that, him cupping her. She found her body was moving unconsciously against him. She opened her mouth to say – God, did she have to give him permission aloud?

Something suddenly changed in his expression. He took the hand away and went to unbutton her, to start to undress her, quickly, roughly. She raised her arms to let him.