She rang the bell, and when a voice crackled on the intercom, she announced herself.

‘This is Anne Martin. I’m from social services and it’s about Miles Thornton. Could I have a quick word?’

The person at the other end said something unintelligible and she was buzzed in. Her new sandals clacked on the boards as she went up the narrow stairs. A young man was standing at the open door of the flat, wearing smart trousers and a shirt but barefooted. He was holding a mug of coffee.

‘Hello,’ Frieda said, holding out a hand. ‘Anne Martin.’

‘Duncan Mortimer,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

‘Could I come in? This won’t take long.’

She didn’t wait to see if he would ask for identification, but walked past him into the flat. She should probably have bought a briefcase yesterday. She pulled her notebook from her bag.

‘Would you like some coffee?’

‘No, thank you. I won’t take up your time.’ She could hear a tap running down the hall, then a door slammed.

‘You said this was about Miles?’

‘Yes. Just a routine follow-up.’

‘Poor sod.’ He took a gulp of coffee. ‘Tell me. Have you seen him yourself?’

‘Seen him? You mean, before?’

‘I feel gutted about what’s happened and just want to know if he’s OK.’

‘Of course, we all do. That’s why I’m here.’

‘But will he be all right?’

Frieda looked at him; she felt that they were having different conversations. ‘That’s impossible to say, until we find him.’

‘Find him?’

‘You did know that Miles has been missing for several weeks?’

‘What?’ She started to speak, but he interrupted her. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘Haven’t the police told you?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He’s come back.’

‘Miles has come back?’

‘Yeah. He turned up yesterday. I thought that was why you were here.’

‘Oh,’ said Frieda. She pushed her glasses back up her nose and tried to keep her expression neutral. ‘Well, that’s good news.’

The young man’s laugh was harsh and unsteady. ‘You think so? He’s in a complete fucking mess.’

‘Psychotic?’

‘That’s the least of it. He’s off his head, as far as I can make out. And he’s badly injured. Well, that’s the polite way of putting it. I spoke to his poor mum. She said he looked as if he’d been tortured.’

The room suddenly seemed smaller and colder.

‘What does that mean?’ Frieda asked.

‘It’s all I know. She was weeping so hard I didn’t like to ask her for details. I wanted to go and see him but he probably doesn’t want to see me. We didn’t part on very good terms.’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s in that psychiatric hospital south of the river. Hang on, I wrote down the name.’

‘It’s all right. I know the one you mean.’

‘If you see him, tell him I said hi. Tell him I said get well soon.’

‘I will.’

After she’d gone to an internet café to look up the time that June Reeve’s funeral would take place the day after tomorrow – it was eleven fifteen at the East London Crematorium – Frieda bought a cinnamon pastry from a bakery on the high street, then went into a quiet square to eat it and to think. She sat on a wooden bench; the sun was warm on her exposed neck and bare legs; a pigeon pecked at the grass a few feet away. She ate the pastry very slowly, feeling its stodgy sweetness comfort her. Tortured. What did that mean? Who would have done such a thing? The question was like an ill wind blowing through her, making her feel chilly in spite of the summer heat. Because she thought she knew the answer.

She opened her A-Z, found herself on the map and saw she was near Peckham Rye Park. She would go there and she would decide what to do next; she would make herself a plan, a grid for the hours ahead. Frieda was a woman who ordered her days. Even when she was relaxing, she did so purposefully, setting aside time for friends, or for making her drawings in her little garret room. Now the day seemed large and shapeless. She sat in the ornamental garden, in the flat summer green of the park. For a while, she concentrated upon the fact of Miles Thornton’s reappearance, and his torture. But it was like a foggy darkness that she couldn’t grasp and she let it slide back into her mind. She would retrieve it later.

Normally she would be in her consulting room now, sitting in her red armchair, watching the face of a patient opposite her and listening to their words or their silence. She’d let them go and there was no way of knowing whether they were all right or not. Her mind turned to Josef and his mournful brown eyes, to Reuben, to her niece Chloë, who had always known that when she was in trouble or need – as she often was – she could turn to Frieda. Not any more.

Then she let herself think of Sasha and Ethan, and her heart constricted painfully. Of everyone she had left behind, it was they who worried her the most. Chloë was often chaotic, but she was also angry and resilient. Sasha, on the other hand, never fought her own corner. She was vulnerable and needy, especially now that she was a single mother with a demanding job, a small child, an angry ex and a nanny who, as far as Frieda could tell, was self-righteously unsympathetic. And Ethan couldn’t stand up for himself. However much he retreated under the table to his own small place of safety, in the real world he had a crumbling mother, a wounded and angry father, and a hard-voiced nanny who called him a ‘bad boy’.

She consulted her A-Z once more, then made up her mind. Ten minutes later she was on the train that went from Peckham Rye to Dalston Junction. From there she walked to the bus station and took the 243 towards Wood Green. She was the only person on it, apart from a small, sad-looking woman with a bedraggled miniature dog at her feet. Neither of them paid any attention to her. She got off at Stoke Newington and went into a small health-food café where she bought a vegetable wrap and a bottle of water. Then she walked towards Sasha’s house. It took an effort not to glance round continually. She kept a steady pace as she passed the door, looking sideways but seeing nothing. The curtains upstairs were closed, the shutters downstairs half open. There was no sign that anyone was in. She walked to the top of the road and leaned against a plane tree. She wasn’t hungry but ate some of her wrap, watching to see if anyone came or went. Sasha would be at work for a few more hours, but Ethan and Christine would surely turn up.

At two o’clock, she left her post and walked the short distance to Clissold Park. She had been there many times before, with Sasha and Ethan, sometimes Frank as well – and a few times with Sandy. They had taken Ethan in his buggy when he was a small baby and shown him the ducks, the deer. For a moment, she almost felt him beside her now, looking at her, listening, throwing back his head in laughter, taking her hand in his. But, no, he was dead – murdered – and she was alone. How had they come to this?

She stood by the enclosure where the deer were kept and put her face to the fencing, and then she saw them on the other side, half hidden by trees. Ethan first, his face red and blotchy, and there was Christine beside him, holding his hand and pulling him. He was crying; now she could hear him, though she couldn’t make out the words and perhaps there were no words, just a sobbing wretchedness. Christine was tugging him, her face set hard. She wasn’t responding at all to his distress, simply dragging him along as if he were a heavy object that needed to be moved to a different place. Ethan stumbled and she kept on walking at her brisk, steady pace while he hung from her. ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,’ he was saying, and reaching behind him, pulling to go back in the direction they had come from, his face screwed up and blubbery with tears.

Frieda stood quite still and watched them as they disappeared round the bend in the path and his sobs died away. Her fists were clenched; her heart was clenched. It took all her strength not to run after them and wrench the child from the woman’s grip. But she did not. She turned and walked down the path they had come from. She noticed items scattered in front of her and, bending down, discovered they were some of Ethan’s miniature wooden animals – the ones he took with him under the table into his imaginary world. That was what he had been trying to get back to. She picked them up one by one, carefully checking that she had not missed any and brushing off the dirt.