‘So you thought she’d gone to stay with someone for the night?’ the woman constable suggested eventually, offering her some tissues. ‘A friend maybe?’

Alison nodded and sniffed.

‘Without telling you?’ the man called Lowry asked, sounding rather bored.

This was the difficult bit to have to explain to strangers, straight out. Kerri had changed so much in the last two years, through the divorce. She had been such a good, obedient little girl before. Now she seemed set on hurting her mother at every opportunity. She had done this before, going off to stay with a friend without warning, knowing Alison would worry and be forced to ring round everyone until she found where she was. To be quite honest, it was a relief (she was ashamed to say it) to find the flat empty when she returned exhausted from the hospital, because then she didn’t have to face the sulks, the rudeness, the jibes, becoming more habitual and polished with every day that passed.

‘You’re a nurse?’ the woman constable asked.

‘I work in the kitchens.’

She felt that the policewoman was sizing her up, trying to decide how reliable she was, and she fiddled self-consciously with the sleeve of her blouse, glad now that she’d changed into something smart, a reminder of better times.

So Alison didn’t ring round her daughter’s friends that first evening. The following evening, yesterday, when Kerri still hadn’t come home, she started to make the calls, thinking that the girl, to punish her, was refusing to appear until she did so. Nobody knew where she was. Worse, none of her friends had seen her at school that day. The school was closed by this time, and Alison had waited till this morning to get them to confirm Kerri’s absence.

‘I think her father’s got her,’ she concluded, any hope that the police could help her ebbing away.

‘What makes you say that?’ the man in the suit asked. The way he pursed his mouth with impatience, and drummed his fingers, flustered her. His fingers were stained brown, and his eyes kept flicking around the room as if they were searching for an ashtray.