‘It was. I’m sure it sounds silly, but at the time it felt—’ His chin goes up defiantly. ‘It felt magical. As if the whole thing had actually happened, but somehow we’d both forgotten, and telling the story was bringing it to life again. Aislinn was laughing, adding in bits of her own; she kept saying, “We must have been starving, maybe the man at the doughnut kiosk in O’Connell Street gave us doughnuts,” and “Maybe a dog almost sniffed us out under the umbrella, and we threw a bit of doughnut to make it go away . . .” Like I said: she was happy with me making up stories around her. She encouraged it. She brought it out in people.’

He makes it sound like the whole thing was as unthinking and cute as a smile, just Aislinn skipping along among the daisies scattering happy daydreams wherever she went. I’m not so sure. I think of her in Missing Persons that day, pelting me with everything that should have started my mind wandering off down stories: the mystery, the tears, the snippets of info about what her dad had been like, the scraps of childhood reminiscence. If I had bitten – and maybe I would have, if the Daddy crap hadn’t rubbed me up the wrong way – I would have been a lot more likely to give her what she was after: And then the genius detective solved the poor orphan girl’s problem, and they all lived happily ever after. It worked on Gary. Aislinn knew how to use her knack.

She didn’t get me. I raise a mental finger at her and say to Rory, ‘And you’re thinking that might have had something to do with what happened to her.’

Rory is nodding hard. ‘Yes. Yes. The thing about daydreams is that they don’t last. One brush up against reality, and that’s the end of them. I know I must sound ridiculously spacy to someone like you, but I do understand that much.’

A sudden slice to his voice, and a sharp flash of his eyes; gone almost too fast to catch, but I was watching. Rory isn’t fluffy clouds and adorable endings straight through; he’s got something solid and keen-edged at the centre. Just like Aislinn. That combination made the two of them a perfect match, and then it turned on them.

‘For someone like me,’ Rory says, ‘that’s not a problem. I spend half my time in my head anyway, always have. I realise that, too.’ That edge again. ‘So when I bang up against reality and it bursts my bubble, that’s not the end of the world. I’m used to it. Deep down, I was expecting it all the time.’