Chapter 9: The Name Nessa Wrote Down

The notebook was in his coat.

Not the coat on the hook by the door — the other one, the one he had not worn since he moved in, folded flat at the bottom of the wardrobe beneath two spare blankets and a pair of boots that still had Yorkshire clay in the treads. He had known this, every day for three years. He had known the exact weight and position of it the way you know a healing wound: by the quality of attention you direct away from it.

He found it at half past eleven in the morning. He had been looking since nine.