Louisa parks outside the house, yanks the handbrake. ‘So,’ she says. ‘What do you think?’

Isla can’t speak for a moment. She must have lived in this house almost twenty-five years without ever looking at it. She had no idea it was so ugly.

‘It took your father all weekend to paint the woodwork,’ Louisa says. ‘As soon as you said you were coming home, he managed to find time for all the jobs he’s been putting off.’

Isla can see now that the fencing around the verandah has been freshly painted. The hedge at the front of the house has been trimmed into a sharp oblong and hanging baskets have been suspended either side of the door, spilling over with something pink and purple. The weatherboard looks old next to the fresh paint and the baskets look foolish. Mutton dressed as lamb. Her throat tightens. ‘I’d have walked past it.’

‘You’ve been away too long.’

She manages a murmur of assent.

‘That one,’ Louisa says, pointing at the house next door, ‘was Mandy’s.’

Isla turns in her seat. Her mum is very still, holding her hands in her lap.

‘Was it?’

‘You don’t remember?’

Isla looks from her mum to the neighbours’ house and back. She remembers nothing. The sense of Mandy that she felt on the phone to her dad has gone. She only has the present: the exactness of the buildings, the gateposts, the hedges.

‘You never mentioned her,’ Isla says. ‘I don’t remember you ever saying her name before.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Weren’t you friendly with her?’

‘No, not really. I hadn’t thought of her in a long time, before the police turned up.’

Isla suspects this isn’t quite true. The car is hot without the air conditioning and there’s a smell of melting plastic. She catches her mum’s eye as she unfastens her seat belt and is surprised to see hurt in her face.

‘She might be living quietly, somewhere remote,’ Isla says. ‘Isn’t that the most likely thing?’

‘I don’t think so. People don’t disappear without a trace these days.’

‘But this was thirty years ago.’

‘Thirty years without a trace is suspicious, Isla.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says the police.’ She says it sharply. ‘They seem to think something happened to her. I’d love to think they were wrong.’

This isn’t quite true either, Isla thinks. This is a chance for her mum to air her discontent. Decades of it.

Isla gets out of the car, slams the door shut and pulls her bag from the boot.

‘Let me take that,’ Louisa says, reaching for Isla’s bag. They have a brief, ill-tempered struggle over who will carry it: Isla refuses to let go and the strap starts to rip from the fabric of the case. She drops it and the weight surprises her mother, almost toppling her over.

‘Sorry,’ Isla says. She doesn’t like herself in her mum’s company. Ten years have changed nothing: they still bring out the worst in each other. Tiredness hits her and she wishes she were elsewhere. She longs for the dark chill of London, the damp paving slabs, the cool slant of the sun.