TWO

‘OK,’ Sian said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’ She tried to sound calm and collected, professional, as if this wasn’t the most interesting case to cross her threshold since she’d started the agency. The truth was that hearing the young woman voice her suspicions about her identity had felt to Sian like waking up from a long, vaguely unpleasant dream. She pulled a yellow legal pad from the top drawer of her desk and picked up a pen. ‘Your name?’

‘Ana Renaux,’ she said. Then she spelled out the surname in full as Sian wrote it down. She wrinkled up her nose. ‘My mum changed our names two boyfriends ago. They both chose it after the guy inTwin Peaks but they spelled it wrong. It should be like the car, of course.’ There was a level of disdain at the back of this statement. ‘Anyway, my original name is Smith. Likethat’s original.’

Sian tried not to smile at the mini rant. ‘And what makes you think you might be Courtney?’ she asked. Apart from all your mum’s boyfriends who you haven’t liked and the world’s lack of originality with your birth surname, she added silently.

Ana let out the smallest shot of laughter. ‘Look at the picture,’ she said, gesturing towards the piece of paper in Sian’s hand.

Sian did, and then studied Ana again. There was no doubt of her resemblance to the image. Aside from the dyed hair and a little more immature chubbiness around the cheeks than the computer projection had estimated, Ana looked as similar as a human could do to those weird, half-formed images. To Sian, the more pressing question was whether the generated image was likely to look like the missing girl. If Courtney were even still alive, which she doubted. Sian had been a police officer and she knew all of the probabilities, which were not in poor little Courtney’s favour at all after so many years missing.

‘I can see what you mean,’ Sian said. ‘But there must be other things. Doubts that you have about your parents that mean you can entertain this idea. Most people would see the resemblance and dismiss it, or even laugh about it, and not really think it could be them. They would know it couldn’t be.’

Ana nodded. ‘My friend Snapchatted me the picture and that was the way she acted. Alllol look at this, it’s you, like it was a big joke. But it wasn’t funny.’

Sian kept her gaze level and waited.