Deborah and Richard Vine sat in front of the TV cameras together. They still shared a surname, but they didn’t look at each other. Tanner had told them to keep it simple: tell the world how they missed Joanna and appeal to whoever it was who had taken her to let her come home. Don’t worry about showing emotion. The media would like that. Just so long as it didn’t stop them speaking.

‘Let my daughter come home,’ said Deborah Vine. Her voice broke; she covered her newly haggard face with one hand. ‘Just let her come back home.’

Richard Vine added, more violently, ‘Please give us our daughter back. Whoever knows anything, please help.’ His face was pale and blotched with red.

‘What do you think?’ Langan asked Tanner.

Tanner shrugged. ‘You mean, are they sincere? I’ve got no idea. How can a kid disappear like that, into thin air?’

There wasn’t a summer holiday that year. They had been going to go to Cornwall, to stay on a farm. Rosie remembered them planning it, how there would be cows in the fields and hens in the yard and even an old fat pony the owners might let them ride. And they would go to the nearby beaches. Joanna was scared of the sea – she shrieked when waves went over her ankles – but she loved building sandcastles and looking for shells, eating ice cream cones with chocolate Flakes stuck into the top.

Instead, Rosie went to her grandmother’s house for a few weeks. She didn’t want to go. She needed to be at home, for when Joanna was found. She thought Joanna might be upset if she wasn’t there; it would be as if she didn’t care enough to wait.