They talked. About this and that and nothing in particular. Not like social misfits and addicts. Not like deadly enemies or people with suicidal tendencies. Just like two completely normal people. It was liberating.

Kerstin looked in the fridge, just to confirm her suspicions. No one had stayed here for several years—all that was to be found in the fridge was beer with a best before date more than three years ago. While Kerstin turned the kitchen upside down, Jeanette worked on the common space. Neither of them found what they were looking for, or anything else of interest. Not even in the chimney.

Then they tackled the bedrooms, the halls, the porch, and the veranda, and they even put a ladder up outside in the pouring rain so that they could check the loft in the roof, which had to be accessed from the outside. But nowhere did they find what they were looking for.

At around two o’clock they stopped for lunch and sat on the covered decking, shivering as the heavy rain drenched the forest around them.

57. Sandra

57

Sandra

SANDRA WAS SITTING in her old childhood bedroom under the eaves, with her gaze fixed on a faded Spice Girls poster with greasy stains left by Blu Tack in the corners. It was three o’clock, and in a few hours’ time the afternoon would turn to evening and then night. The fourth day would soon be at an end, and what would happen then? How much time had been assigned to the major police operation, how long would the volunteers keep up the search before their motivation began to falter?

Sandra realised that within the not-too-distant future, there would be no one searching any longer, and the investigation would end up in a box under someone’s desk, awaiting new leads that would never emerge.

But they hadn’t reached that point yet, she had to remind herself. It was the middle of summer and light practically 24/7, not counting the almost-black clouds darkening the sky and the persistent rain threatening to drown the whole island. To date, the conditions hadn’t deterred the hundreds of remarkable people who had still gone out into the woods and countryside to search for Sandra’s son. If they hadn’t given up yet, then Sandra couldn’t either—that went without saying.

And she had caught up. She had spent six weeks slaving over the book, writing in all her spare time, and now she had reached the present day. All that remained was to write what hadn’t happened yet. Or hadn’t become clear. The work she faced would demand less effort—a normal, fully achievable level of work—which she would pursue during her free time.