“Because of her age, she won’t be identified by name in the media, but that artist’s impression has already been in all the papers and on TV, as you know, so plenty of people have seen an image of her. Obviously some of them will know who she was, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a leak before long.”

“It hardly matters to her, does it, but her family . . . What you said about the media.”

“We’ll do our best to protect them.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Linda. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” Clearly upset, she gathered up her things. “I must go,” she said. “Are you coming?”

Banks still had half a pint left in his glass. He could easily have left it, but he was strangely comfortable in the cool, stone pub, and he never minded being alone with his thoughts. “No,” he said. “I’ll hang on and finish my drink. Maybe read a poem or two. You head off. Thanks for coming.”

“Until tomorrow afternoon, then.”

“Tomorrow.”

Banks hunched over the rest of his beer, Linda’s book on the table in front of him, and thought for a moment. Linda Palmer was obviously feeling a lot of empathy for the dead girl, Mimsy. However different their backgrounds and the circumstances of their suffering, he also felt that the two girls would have understood each other. Linda was hardly groomed over time, as it appeared Mimsy Moffat may have been, but she was given cigarettes and champagne and promised a spot on Do Your Own Thing! by someone loved and trusted by the whole country. Mimsy was most likely abused by people she thought were her friends. Perhaps Mimsy was far more knowing and sophisticated at fifteen than Linda had been at fourteen, but when it came right down to it, that didn’t matter. Their fates had been similar: both had been betrayed and violated at a very early age, but only one had lived.

He opened the book Linda had given him and turned to a poem called “Memory”:

It can cut breath

into corpses,

image the womb

and frame things

which are not;

yet it cannot transfer

to the minute the exact angle

of that branch’s bending,

nor measure its dance.

Itself but for a moment,

outside falls in:

drawn away

from the natural breeze

into space thick as blood,

the vivid, fleshy

shadow sways

inaccurate and

permanent, against

a changing sky.