Helen felt as though her brain could be divided into two lobes, not left and right, but Frankie and That Message. She had thought of nothing else for the past ten hours, lying awake the entire night fretting about it, resenting Sean for the scant sleep he had managed, even though for most of the time she knew he was awake too, lying silently next to her. Occasionally he rolled over and cuddled her tightly, almost fiercely, but it was of no comfort. Several times she almost blurted it out to him, asked his advice. They were a team. Surely she had to tell him that there was someone out there claiming they knew where Frankie was? But it was too risky. Tell no-one, the message said. It was from a woman called Janet Friars. What if she did tell Sean or that detective, and Frankie suffered for it?

Also, their FLO had made a dismissive comment that had stuck with Helen, as the FLO had unpacked milk and bread from the corner shop. She’d said that Izzy and Liam’s parents were being hounded by ‘nutters on Facebook’ insisting they knew stuff: psychics, hippies, the mentally ill, the attention-seeking . . . ‘Wasting police time like that,’ the FLO had tutted. ‘Diverting valuable resources. Shameful. You ignore them, if you get any.’

But what if she ignored it and Frankie suffered more? Helen felt the sword of Damocles hover over her, hanging by a single hair, about to cleave her in two – and for a moment, she thought she would have welcomed it. At least it would be an end to this intolerable nightmare.

She had been spending a lot of time on Facebook recently, obsessively checking the page Marion had told her about at the gym, reading the kind comments and obsessing over the nasty, critical ones. She had messaged Marion about it and her friend had fired back a message telling her to ‘Ignore them – they are stupid trolls.’ Then Marion had added, ‘I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have told you about the page if I’d known about the trolls.’

It was easy for Marion to say, wasn’t it? Ignore the trolls. Helen felt compelled to read the vile comments about what a bad mother she was, how she would burn in hell for letting that ‘sweet little angel’ out of her sight. In the rare moments that she slept, she dreamed about them, about a mob screaming abuse at her, pointing their witchy fingers and taunting her.

The endless night finally morphed into a reluctant peach sunrise, and a morning bringing the mixed blessing of getting out of bed in their own house again. On one hand, it was a relief to once more be surrounded by the familiar scents of home and their own belongings, knowing where everything was . . .