What had started off as an innocuous request (I wondered if you could find out some information about my biological parents?) had taken Jackson into a maze that had led to dead ends at every turn. Hope McMaster was an existential conundrum. She might exist in the antipodean here and now, wife to Dave, mother to little Aaron. She might be attending ante-natal classes in the invisible company of the squid (and Pilates – it’s a miracle!) but any previous incarnation of her seemed to be a figment of the imagination. Although just whose imagination, Jackson wasn’t sure.

Pandora advanced towards the box, the curious cat looked to be in mortal danger. ‘Perhaps there’s a cat in the box,’ Julia mused, ‘like Schrödinger’s.’

‘Who?’ Jackson asked before he could prevent himself.

‘You know, Schrödinger’s cat. In the box. Both alive and dead at the same time.’

‘That’s a ridiculous idea.’

‘In practice maybe, but theoretically . . .’

‘Is this related to atoms by chance?’

‘Verschränkung,’ Julia said with relish. Luckily the arrival of a fresh pot of tea at that moment distracted her from these mysteries.

After some mandatory adoption counselling in New Zealand, Hope McMaster had applied to Leeds Crown Court for her original birth certificate. Last week she received the news that there wasn’t one. Nor was there any record of her adoption ever having taken place.

‘See – kidnapped. Shall I be mother? Seeing as I am one and you’re not.’

The phone was ringing when they came in the house. Tracy picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hello?’ but found only silence on the other end. There was someone there, she was sure, and she exchanged a mute dialogue with the caller, like a battle of wills. The caller gave up first and she heard the click of a receiver. ‘Good riddance,’ Tracy said. She had more important things on her agenda. Like a kidnapped kid.

They hadn’t done any food shopping – not that Tracy had enough energy to cook – and she had picked up pizza on the way home. Play it safe, all kids liked pizza, it might not be the healthiest thing in the world but right now Tracy didn’t care, as long as Courtney didn’t throw it back up again. Plenty of time for green vegetables and fruit in the future. The future was suddenly a place that you might want to be, rather than a place where you were going to have to slog it out with tedium on a day-by-day basis. A really, really terrifying place that you might want to be.

The cupboard was bare, not a bone for a dog, not a tin of beans for a kidnapped kid, just some blackening bananas sitting accusingly in a fruit bowl. Tracy hadn’t really cooked anything since Janek started on the kitchen, she’d been living off takeaways and microwaved ready meals (nothing new there, of course), but when she looked around now she realized that the kitchen was nearly finished, just decorating and the lino to go down, a few tweaks here and there. The bag with Janek’s tools sat neatly in a corner. She would have to go back to the bank and get more money for him. Only this morning the idea that he would soon be gone had been profoundly depressing to her, now it hardly seemed to matter at all. She had embarked on an unexpected and perilous adventure and it was possible that she would fall off the edge of the world.

‘Another slice?’ Tracy asked and Courtney looked at her blankly, her mouth hanging open. Would Tracy have to get the kid’s adenoids removed, did they even do that any more? She wasn’t a bonny kid but Tracy could relate to that. It took a few seconds for Tracy’s words to reach Courtney’s brain (probably be a good idea to get her a hearing test as well) and then she nodded her head, up and down, and kept on nodding until Tracy advised her to stop. Was she the full shilling? Backward – but you weren’t allowed to say that any more. What did it matter, a kid was a kid.

Tracy was too wound up to eat. Only alcohol could address the state of mind she was in but she didn’t want the kid to see her drinking, she had probably been around drunks all her short life, so instead Tracy made a sober cup of Typhoo and watched Courtney eating, imagining private tutoring to bring her up to speed, a lot of visits to the ENT department, an eye test (she had a bit of a squint going on), a good haircut, followed by a thoughtful, child-centred school, perhaps one of those hippy-dippy ones – Linda Pallister might know about those. After that, who knows, kid might manage to get a place at the kind of university that was a polytechnic by another name, and Tracy would be there when she graduated in cap and gown, drinking cheap white wine afterwards with other proud parents.

Part of Tracy’s brain was still on the beat in the Merrion Centre and hadn’t caught up with the bizarre turn the day’s events had taken. This lagging part of the brain seemed to suddenly sit up and take notice. What the hell is going on? it asked. You’re making long-term plans to live outside the law! Yes, Tracy said, to the recalcitrant bit of brain. That’s exactly what I’m doing. She was a kidnapper. She had napped a kid. She had never thought about where the word came from before.

How was she going to explain the sudden appearance of a child in her life? It would be easier if they both vanished, started again somewhere else where nobody knew them (I’m Mrs Waterhouse, and this is my little girl, Courtney). Change Courtney’s name to something more middle-class – Emily or Lucy. Put down new roots in the country perhaps – the Dales or the Lakes – they could easily live on Tracy’s police pension. The kid could go to a little village primary and Tracy could get a few chickens, grow some veg, cook nourishing meals. She imagined herself at the annual village fête, doing facepainting, baking cupcakes (Oh,Tracy’s a wonderful mum, isn’t she? ). Of course, she had never baked a cupcake in her life but everyone started somewhere.

Run for the hills. Or the Dales or the Lakes. Bloody good job she had that National Trust holiday cottage booked for Friday, couldn’t have timed it better even if she’d known ahead that her life was going to turn upside down. A breathing space. Time to think. Foxes in a hole, hiding from the hounds. Just in case someone came looking for them before they could make their final escape. Someone like Kelly Cross, changing her mind about the recent sale. Caveat emptor. What after that – stay or run? Fight or flight. Start a new life (Imogen Brown and her little girl, Lucy) or try and carry on with the old one (butch Tracy and the kidnapped kid) and risk discovery and its consequences?

She would have to change her own name as well, she’d never liked Tracy. Imogen or Isobel, something feminine and romantic. She supposed she didn’t look like an Imogen. Imogens were middle-class Home Counties girls with long blonde hair and vaguely Bohemian mothers. Her surname would have to change too, something plain, unremarkable perhaps. Imogen Brown and her little girl, Lucy, walking hand in hand with the kid into a clean, untarnished, white future. She would make up for all the other lost kids. One fallen fledgling popped back into the nest.

Was she too old to pass as a mother? IVF, followed by sudden, early widowhood would take care of a lot of questions. New names, new identities, it would be like being in witness protection. The one thing that was odd was that Courtney hadn’t mentioned her mother. No ‘Where’s Mummy?’ or ‘I want my mummy.’ No sign at all that she was missing someone. Was she a throwaway, or something precious that had been stolen?

‘Courtney,’ she said hesitantly, ‘where do you think Mummy is just now?’ Courtney shrugged extravagantly and worked her way through another slice before volunteering, ‘I don’t have a mummy.’ (Really? This was very good news. For Tracy anyway.)