Very gradually, however, she had begun to accept that, despite her devastation, she was nonetheless a twenty-year-old woman who needed to construct some kind of life for herself. As well as the long-term future, there were the immediate practical considerations of earning a wage and paying the rent. Mum wasn’t there any more to hold her hand and wipe her tears. Even if she had been, this was the point when she had to make her own way in the world, and it struck her harshly that her previous choices had left her in a position whereby there were very few things she was cut out or qualified to do. Acting, therefore, quickly recovered its lustre, though she ceased thinking in terms of vague, dreamy ambitions and more in terms of a purposeful way to fill her days and score a pay cheque at the end of them.

Good job for her nobody else had the same genius idea.

‘Foxtrot Five confirms the eyeball. Subject is walking still walking along Cresswell Lane in no apparent hurry. Stopping to look in a shop window ahead.’

‘He’s probably looking out for me. Overtake him if you have to, then pause for some window-shopping yourself.’

‘Foxtrot Five. Yes yes.’

She halted and stared into the window of a craft and jewellery shop, her focus on the reflections in the glass rather than the goods beyond it. She was angled so that she could see the subject, but caught a glimpse of herself, one of those sideways snapshots that reveals all the more for its brevity and obliqueness. She was attired as smartly as Jim insisted, in a jacket and trousers like some proper, grown-up professional, but all she could see was a little girl dressing up as something she was not, for play. Short, slight, a little underfed of late, the clothes wearing her rather than the other way around. Her hair was swept back by an Alice band for better peripheral vision, but at a cost of more starkly exposing her face, the myriad sun-prompted freckles upon it making her look about thirteen. She was twenty. When she was thirteen, she thought she’d be looking back at a woman’s face, something more like her mum’s: not this eternal teenager who was going to get carded in pubs until the year 2020.

The subject started moving again, albeit at a dawdling pace, Jasmine about fifteen yards behind. Walking down the street alone, ostensibly talking to herself, she was grateful for the advent of Bluetooth and hands-free kits, wondering how her predecessors remained inconspicuous on a follow while updating their colleagues over the radio.