She took the crockery through to the kitchen, which was in an equal state of disarray. Emma put the soiled things to soak in the sink and filled up the dishwasher, which was half full of dirt-ingrained plates. She turned it on for them and on her way back through to the sitting room she was distracted by a photograph stuck on a cupboard: the whole family, wrapped up in scarves and hats, stood on a windy British beach somewhere. It could have been an advert for life insurance or a bank, manipulating happiness into money: everyone was laughing, smiling, all eyes on Annie, who was kicking a leg high in the air, grinning a toothless grin, her red hair blown wildly up by the wind. Emma felt her heart beat fast in her chest. The abject finality of loss still struck her with the same force as it had all those years ago. The phone began to ring. She stood there listening to it for a moment before coming back through.

‘Do you want me to get that?’ she asked. He was sitting down on the small two-seater; he’d cleared a space for them both and had poured two whiskies, which sat on either arm of the sofa.

‘Oh no, don’t bother. I can’t understand a word they say . . . Please sit down. Have a drink,’ he said. She sat down next to him, shifting one of the bin bags at her feet.

‘Has Connie remembered anything yet?’ he asked, tapping his elegant but stiff fingers against his glass.

‘Things are coming back,’ Emma said, straightening her skirt, turning to face him better.

‘The car?’

‘We’ve shown her photographs of the girls . . .’

She saw it then, the incomprehension and bewilderment. He looked pummelled by shock. With a shaky hand he drank from his whisky glass.

‘She’s in denial,’ Emma said.

‘Karl said you called it something, her condition . . . ?’

‘Dissociative amnesia. It’s one way of dealing with trauma.’

‘He thinks she’s faking it. Do you?’

‘Well, faking it is comparatively unusual. Dissociative amnesia is more to do with the brain protecting itself, locking traumatic events away, as it were, into a box, and pushing it to the back of the brain,’ she said. It was something she herself had become quite adept at, in a conscious way, of course.

‘And what’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Must she remember?’ he asked. ‘No good is in that box. Just pain. Wouldn’t you agree that perhaps there is enough pain about already? Why bother?’

She wanted to take a sip from her glass. She could imagine how good it must taste; she could almost feel the burn in her throat.