I drained my lemonade superfast. I waited till they’d passed by me and then followed them a few steps behind. They turned left and wandered aimlessly for a moment, peering at menus in restaurant windows. They settled on a Chinese with shiny ducks hanging in the window.

I sat at a bus stop across the road. They sat at a window table. He was all over her. He cupped her face with his hand. He stroked her plait. He stared and stared at her. He was creepy as fuck. But she seemed to like it. She took mouthfuls of food from him like a baby. She kept the eye contact. She held his hand across the table. She threw her head back with laughter.

They were in there for an hour. Then the bill came and I saw him insist on paying. I thought, That’s nice, you, with a family at home, buying noodles for some girl young enough to be your daughter. I thought, You total wanker.

He walked her to the Tube station afterwards. They did a sort of hand-squeezing thing, a quick hug, no kissing, too close to home I guess, too close to work.

I saw his face as he turned back to cross the road, the sly little smile on his face. I thought of his skinny blonde wife back at their posh Hampstead flat, probably putting some freshly cooked meal in the freezer because her husband had eaten his dinner out tonight. I wondered what he’d told her. Just a bite with colleagues.

I watched him cross the Finchley Road, sprinting through a break in the traffic when the red man was up. He took his phone out at the other side, no doubt texting his skinny wife: On my way home now!

It was starting to get dark; the sky was a kind of chalky lilac and cars had started to put on their headlights. I was hungry and I knew Aaron had cooked something good for dinner. Part of me just wanted to go home, get rid of my heavy rucksack of books, eat something good in front of the TV. Another part of me wanted to find out what Roan Fours looked like walking into his house after taking a woman out for dinner.

I waited for the red man to turn green; then I sprinted across the road and caught up with him just as he turned the corner to the stone steps up to the steep hill. He’d put his earphones in now. I could hear him humming very quietly under his breath. He walked fast and I was out of breath by the time we got to his street. I didn’t realise how fit he was.

Then he was outside his house, looking for his keys, opening the door, closing it behind him. He had a certain swagger to his entrance, like he was lord of the manor.

I was standing outside a kind of empty building plot; it had a big wooden gate across it and high brick walls overhung with flowering foliage. I peered through a hole in the gate and saw a huge piece of empty land covered in flowers and rubble; it didn’t look quite real, like a secret park or fairyland. I could see the foundations where a big house had been. The land must have covered at least an acre, maybe even more. Above it the sky had turned violet and gold. There was a notice taped to the gate. Apparently they were going to build some flats here. The notice was dated three years ago. I hoped that no one would ever build flats here, that it would just stay like this, hidden away, growing layers and layers, getting denser and denser.

I saw a movement to one side. Something fleeting and shiny. A fox.

It stopped for a moment and stared at me. Right at me.

My stomach rumbled. I hitched my schoolbag up on my shoulder and headed home.

22

One morning, a few days after Valentine’s night, Owen’s doorbell rings. He waits for Tessie to answer it but she appears to be out.

After the second ring, he goes to the intercom and says hello.

A female voice responds. ‘Hello. Is this Owen Pick?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good morning, I’m Detective Inspector Angela Currie. We’re making door-to-door inquiries about a missing person. Could I ask you to spare a minute to answer a few questions?’

‘Erm …’ He peers at himself quickly in the mirror by the front door. He hasn’t shaved for three days and his hair is in dire need of a wash. He looks dreadful. ‘Yes, sorry, sure. Come in.’

Angela Currie is a heavy-set young woman, short and broad, with disproportionately small feet. She has what looks like naturally blonde hair braided across her hairline and tucked into a bun at the back. She has a nice face and is wearing a flick of black eyeliner across each eyelid.

Behind her is an equally young man, introduced as PC Rodrigues.

‘Could we come in?’

‘Er …’ Owen looks behind him at the open door to Tessie’s flat. How to explain that there is nowhere to sit in his own home as his aunt won’t let him in her living room? ‘Is it OK if we talk out here?’ he says.

He is aware that this makes it sound as if he is trying to hide something.

‘It’s my aunt’s flat,’ he explains. ‘She’s a bit funny about letting people in.’

DI Currie tips her chin to look into the space visible through the crack of the apartment door. ‘No problem,’ she says.

They settle themselves on the small bench next to the stairs leading to the two upper-floor flats. It wobbles precariously, not really designed for sitting on but for resting parcels and such on. DI Currie has to sit with her head bent slightly forward to avoid the mail baskets nailed to the wall above.

‘So,’ she begins, ‘we’re investigating the disappearance of a local girl. I wonder if I could show you some photographs?’

Blood rushes to Owen’s head. He doesn’t know why. He nods and tries to cover the hot parts of his face with his fingers.

DI Currie pulls a printout from an envelope and passes it to him.

It’s a photo of a pretty girl, mixed race by the looks of it, though hard to ascertain precisely her ancestry. She’s wearing large hoop earrings and her hair is worn in a similar style to DI Currie’s, a kind of tight plait close to the skull, holding it to one side. She’s wearing what looks like a school uniform and is smiling.

He passes the sheet back to the detective and awaits another question.

‘Have you ever seen this girl before?’

‘No,’ he says, his hand moving from his face to the back of his neck, which he can feel growing blotchy and hot. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

‘Where were you on the night of February the fourteenth, Mr Pick?’ He starts to shrug; then DI Currie says, ‘It was Valentine’s night. That might make it easier to recall.’

He sucks in his breath, covers his mouth with his hand. Yes. He knows what he was doing on Valentine’s night.

‘Were you home? Or out in the local area? Might you have seen anything?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘No. I was out. I went for dinner. With a friend.’

‘Ah. OK. And what time did you get home? If you can remember?’

‘Eleven thirtyish. Maybe midnight.’

‘And how did you get home that night?’

‘I got the Tube. From Covent Garden to Finchley Road.’

‘And did you maybe see anything strange as you were walking back from the Tube station? Anything untoward?’

He draws his hand across his mouth and shakes his head. He thinks back to the strange episode on the street, when that pretty girl had called him a creep and he’d called her a bitch. It feels like the twisted remnant of a strange dream when he thinks about it now, as if it didn’t really happen. Everything about that night now feels dreamlike, faded in parts like an old photograph.

‘No.’ He shakes his head slowly. ‘No. Nothing.’

He sounds like he’s lying, because in a way he is.

‘And you said you live with your aunt? Is that …’ She looks at a list on a clipboard. ‘Tessa McDonald?’

He nods.

‘And where is Ms McDonald?’

‘I don’t know. She’s probably in the village. Shopping.’

‘Great, well, we’ll be back again, I’m sure, once we’ve built up a better picture of the situation. In the meantime, maybe you could pass my card on to your aunt when she gets home, ask her to give me a call if she can remember anything about that night.’ She peers up the staircase. ‘Anyone else in, do you know?’

He shakes his head. ‘No idea. You can ring on their doorbells, if you like?’

She smiles, clicks her ballpoint pen shut, slides it into her pocket and says, ‘No. I’m sure that will be fine. Maybe I could leave some more of these here?’ She points a couple of printouts towards the mailboxes above the bench. ‘And some more of my cards?’

‘Yes,’ he says, getting to his feet. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well,’ she says, hitching her leather bag up higher on to her shoulder, ‘thank you, Mr Pick, for your time. I really appreciate it. I’m just at the end of a line if you, or anyone else, remembers anything.’

‘You know,’ he says, suddenly, his eyes feeling suddenly too big for his head as a buried memory bursts through the clouds, ‘I did see something that night. I saw someone. Out there.’ He points through the front door to the house opposite. ‘Standing outside that house, in the dark, just sort of looking in. I thought it was a man at first. And then they turned around and it was a girl.’

‘A girl?’

‘Well, at least I think so. It was hard to tell, because they had a hood up.’

His eyes drop to the page in his hand; he reads the description of what the missing girl was wearing just as DI Currie says, ‘What sort of hood?’

‘Like, a hoodie? I think?’