She walks home via the supermarket where she buys all the cake-making ingredients on Georgia’s list. At the checkout she glances across the street again at the entrance to the Tube station, subconsciously looking out for her husband, as if the echo of his appearance there two weeks ago might still be playing out infinitely.

She walks home circuitously, via a couple of the places the newspaper report mentioned, to the estate agent just past the cinema where she sees police tape up around the back entrance, a police car still parked on the street outside. Then to the dogleg in the next road down from her road, the place she sometimes goes to post letters. She doesn’t know the precise location of this attack, but it makes her shudder nonetheless, looking at the hidden places here where a woman could easily be grabbed without anyone seeing.

She walks home quickly after that, all her nerves on end, her breathing coming slightly too hard. As she turns the next corner on to her street, she sees someone sitting on the wall outside her house. It’s a young man, well built. He’s wearing a grey coat with a bright green hoodie underneath. As she gets closer she sees that he is mixed race, very nice-looking. He gets to his feet when he sees Cate turning on to her pathway. He says, ‘Hi, do you live here?’

‘Yes,’ she replies, thinking that she should be nervous, especially in the light of what she’s just been doing, but that she isn’t. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I … I guess. I don’t know. My niece. Saffyre. She was here. I think. You know, Saffyre Maddox? She disappeared … I …’ He pulls at his chin as he talks, as if trying to massage out the right words.

‘You’re Saffyre’s uncle?’ she asks.

‘Yes, I am. Aaron Maddox. Are you Mrs Fours?’

‘Yes.’

‘Roan Fours’s wife?’

She nods.

‘Would it be OK if I asked you a few questions?’

She knows she should say no. She should say I’ve said everything that needs to be said to the police and send him on his way. But there’s something in his body language that suggests he’s carrying something with him, and not just the pain of his missing niece.

She says, ‘What sort of questions?’

‘I’ve found something,’ he says. ‘In her room. And I know I should take it to the police. But I just kind of wanted to check in with you first. Because … I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Could I come in?’

She looks across the street at Owen Pick’s house. It’s blank and quiet. She looks up at her neighbours’ windows. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Of course. Come in.’

In her kitchen, Aaron Maddox sits for a moment in his big grey coat before Cate says, ‘Here, let me hang that up for you.’

‘Thanks, that’s great. Cheers.’

Underneath the coat his hoodie has the Marvel logo and a picture of Spiderman on it. She finds this strangely reassuring.

‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Something cold?’

‘Water would be great. Thank you.’

She pours him a glass of water and places it in front of him.

He clears his throat and smiles awkwardly.

‘You know,’ he begins, ‘I’ve met your husband, just before Saffyre started her sessions with him, back in 2014. He’s a good man.’

‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘He is. He’s a great clinician.’

‘I put my faith in him. You know, a little girl like that, hurting herself as she was, well, you know that there’s something bad happening, something you don’t really want to have to face. But he just got in there with her. Made her feel safe. And stopped her hurting herself.’

‘She was self-harming?’

She does already know this, not because Roan told her, but because of hacking into his work files and reading his reports the previous year.

‘Yeah. Started when she was ten years old. So bad. She’s still got the scars. Like, here.’ He points at the cuffs of his joggers. ‘But your husband. He cured her. So amazing. And then to find out that she was here, you know, outside his house, when she went missing.’ He shakes his head. ‘Unreal. And it can’t just be a coincidence, can it? And, listen, I know’ – he puts his hand out, palm first – ‘I know it’s nothing to do with him. I know you were out that night; I know he was with you. But it’s still weird. And I can’t stop thinking about it. It spins round and round my head all the time. Because as far as I know, after she stopped her sessions with him, she never saw him again. And I don’t even know how she knew where he lived. That’s what gets me. How did she know where he lived?’

He leaves the question hanging, pendulously, between the two of them.

‘Well, it’s possible she saw it written down in his office one day, I suppose …?’

Aaron nods and says, ‘Yeah, I guess it could have been something like that. I’m probably overthinking it all. And that guy.’ He gestures behind him in the direction of the street. ‘The one they reckon abducted her.’ His voice cracks slightly on the words. ‘What do you know about him? Did you know him at all?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. I only saw him in passing. Not even on nodding terms. He talked to my husband once, a few weeks back; he was drunk apparently and asked my husband if he was married. Kind of weird. But with what we know now about his internet habits …’

‘Yeah,’ says Aaron. ‘That’s some sick stuff. I didn’t even know about all that, all that incel thing. God. Sad, sad men.’

‘Toxic masculinity,’ she says. ‘It’s everywhere.’

He nods. But then says, ‘Not in our house, it wasn’t. I just want to say that. Saffyre lived in a house with two men who were both good, who put girls equal to boys. I want you to know that. Whatever happened I know she wasn’t trying to get away from stuff at home. Her home was good. Is good.’

Cate nods. She believes this man, completely, every word he says. ‘I hear you lost your father?’

‘Yeah.’ He gaze drops to his water glass. ‘Back in October. She took it badly. Stopped eating. Stopped doing schoolwork. I said to her that she should come back and see Dr Fours. I offered to set that up for her. But she said she was fine. I got someone in to talk to her from the school, a pastoral teacher. Didn’t make much difference. And then early November she just sort of snapped out of it. Started eating. Got back into her studies. We had an amazing Christmas, just being together, you know, like a real family. And then, I don’t know, after Christmas she just sort of … drifted away again.’

‘In what way?’

‘Just wasn’t at home very much. Spent a lot of time at her best friend’s house. Or “going for walks”. Did a lot of sleepovers. And I suppose I just thought, you know, she’s seventeen, she’ll be an adult soon, I guess she’s spreading her wings. And she was a late bloomer in that way, kind of young for her age, never really had a social life, didn’t do parties, boyfriends, hanging out, nothing like that. So I thought, well, you know, good, it’s about time she found her feet in the world. And then …’

She sees a film of tears across his eyes and feels an instinctive urge to touch him, which she resists. He drags the back of his hand across them and smiles. ‘And yeah, so, I’m just left with all these questions. And I started going through her stuff. There wasn’t much, to be honest. The police have still got her laptop, but I don’t think they’ve found anything on there; they’d have said by now. Every night after work I just sit in her room, with her things, looking for something, anything that might explain what happened to her. Why she was here. What she was doing. And then last night, I found this in the pocket of some old joggers …’

He puts his hand into his back pocket and pulls out a piece of folded paper. He unfolds it and pushes it across the table to Cate.

She reads the words written on it and her blood runs cold and dark.

44

SAFFYRE