The woman’s eyes were watery, but she managed a tiny smile. Perhaps she thought Maggie was joking about the cooker. What kind of saddo cleaned the cooker when they were on holiday, anyway? ‘In that case . . . I don’t suppose you could come with me, could you?’ she asked. ‘I’m going out to look for her and I just—’

‘Of course I will,’ said Maggie as the woman’s voice got smaller and smaller. ‘Absolutely. Let me just grab my key and I’ll be right with you.’

So this was an unexpected road trip, she thought, clambering into the passenger seat of Em’s car moments later. Inside, there were stickers all over the dashboard and crisp packets in the footwell, and it smelled like a cheese-and-onion pasty. Maggie wondered if it would be very rude of her to wind the window down. ‘I’ve brought my map of the area; where do you think she might have gone?’ she asked, unfolding it on her knee as Em started the engine. ‘Gosh, it’s warm, isn’t it?’ she murmured as stale air poured out of the vents. She spotted a button for the window and rested a hopeful finger there. ‘Mind if I . . . ?’

‘I don’t know – into Falmouth, maybe?’ Em said, answering Maggie’s first question before she could finish asking the second. ‘She just took off. She was upset. There was a . . . a small saga, and she was unfairly blamed. She must have felt disbelieved – I didn’t back her up as roundly as I might have done.’ Her mouth trembled again as she executed a clumsy three-point turn in the car park and stalled. ‘Oh, bloody hell. Sorry. Excuse my atrocious driving.’

‘Let’s head for Falmouth then,’ Maggie said. She knew how it was to feel like a rubbish mother, after all – she understood how you could beat yourself up over a badly handled argument. She also knew that teenagers could explode a small grievance into a whole furnace of drama. ‘If she’s on her bike, we might even catch her up. No speeding round the corners now,’ she added, trying to sound as if she were joking, but meaning it too; Em had certainly set off at a far faster lick than Maggie was used to travelling. She pressed the button to open the window and gulped in the delicious cool air that streamed through.

‘Good point,’ Em said, slowing as they approached a bend. ‘Talk about adding insult to injury, if I went and knocked her down now, on top of everything else. Injury to injury, more like.’ She shuddered. ‘Thank you, by the way. This is incredibly nice of you.’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I’m sure Izzie’s fine, she’ll just be blowing off some steam, but all the same . . .’ Her voice wobbled on the words. ‘All the same, thank you.’