I try the front door, which is unlocked, and I am blasted with air conditioning. Mary Anne’s there, as I expect, leaning on the bar counter in a defeated sort of way.

I don’t know where Archie is.

If she’s surprised to see me, she doesn’t show it. ‘Haven’t had enough of me yet?’ She sounds older, somehow. Tired.

‘If you know where Ellis is,’ I say, ‘you need to tell me.’

She blinks.

‘I’m begging you. I know you don’t want to talk about any of this and obviously you have your reasons, but –’

‘Listen,’ she says, with a venom like the day she’d confronted me about my investigations. But this seems different: heavier, I realize, with the weight of real death. ‘I’d give my life for that kid. You think you’re so smart, picking apart everyone’s lives, but if you think I could ever lay a hand on Sylvia, on Ellis …’ She chokes. There’s another name she’d wanted to list but she’d stopped herself. ‘Then whichever devil you belong to should have sent a better detective.’

On Roxy? I believe her. Her eyes are wet with tears and she’s trying not to let me see. She strikes me as a terrible liar so I say what I’d realized in the police station. ‘You’re Baby Blue.’

Mary Anne says nothing.

‘Do you know about the letters? Did you ever see them? She wrote all of them for you.’

A tear leaps from her cheek and bursts against the counter.

I piece it together as I speak. ‘You were supposed to go with her to Nashville. Right? And that’s what the argument was about. She changed her mind. Or you didn’t want to go.’

Her mouth twitches. ‘She was so hurt,’ is all she manages at first. ‘Sylvia didn’t come from Roxy’s indiscretion. That’s what they all thought …’

‘What do you –’

‘Peak of your life, everything about to begin, and a stranger rips it all from you for no reason. The pain she …’

Silence. ‘Does Sylvia know?’

The welling tears burst now, and Mary Anne, taller than me, looks so small and breakable. ‘Why’d she wanna know a thing like that?’

‘I’m sorry. Why do any of this?’ I ask. ‘Why leave the notes? Why grab Archie’s gun?’ She’s stopped functioning and this is the final question I can think to ask, and I do, barely feeling my lips move, almost a growl. ‘Where is she?’

Time seems to halt for a moment. ‘Ellis will be fine,’ she says.

Behind us, the door opens accompanied by a chime. I whip round.

It’s my dad.

I’m locked on him for a moment but, no, he’s ruined everything, and I turn back to Mary Anne. ‘What did Roxy say to you? That caused the row the night before she disappeared?’