Abascal told me, much later, that he had expected me to say it and had been mildly surprised that I did not, and that it would have changed nothing about the case and quite a lot about that morning.

There is one more thing.

Twice during that twenty-five minutes, my son looked at me.

And both times I nodded at him to keep going.

Part Twenty-Nine: The Chair Is Wrong

And then, at about twenty past seven, with the pastries untouched and my son sitting down for the first time and Maya still in her pyjamas, Jillian Lin said the thing that nobody in that kitchen was expecting and that changed the direction of all of it.

She said: “Nathan.