Marysieńka and Danuta – two good-natured blondes from Gdańsk, who wore lots of foundation to work and had their nails done at the new Korean parlour on Westgate Street. They had the use of the agency’s pink-painted Honda Jazz with the HomeMaids logo in purple vinyl stuck on the side of the car. Marysieńka always drove – her boyfriend had a job with the First Bus Company and had taught her to negotiate British traffic like a rally driver. ‘The first rule,’ she maintained, ‘is he who hesitates gets fucked.’ That would make Danuta shriek with laughter as the little HomeMaids car shot out into traffic, forcing the sedate drivers of north Bath to slam on their brakes. The two Poles were nice girls who took cigarette breaks and sometimes smelt vaguely of fish and chips, as if maybe they shared a flat above a takeaway. Sally always imagined they talked about her when the day was finished – made promises to each other never to get that desperate, that downtrodden.

Today they picked Sally up at the end of Isabelle’s long driveway. They were dressed in white jeans and heels under their pink cleaning tabards and they kept the window open, arms out, smoking and banging on the side of the car in time to the radio. They were in their twenties: they wouldn’t have anything to do with a schoolgirl from the nice side of town, so Sally didn’t talk about Lorne being missing. She sat in the back, chewing Airwaves gum to kill the smell of wine on her breath, watching the hedgerow race past and thinking of what else she remembered about Lorne. She’d met her mother once – her name was Polly. Or Pippa or something … Anyway – maybe Isabelle was right: maybe she had run away because of something going on at home. But missing? Really, really missing? And from what the kids had seen on Twitter the police were taking it very seriously, as if something awful had happened to her.