I left the pasta cooking and the soup warming up, and went to sit with Sasha. My eyes were drawn to the photo on the wall. It was our favourite picture, the one we’d taken out of the album and had enlarged and framed. We were approximately three and seven years old, and Mum had us squeezed on to her lap, her special Mum-arms somehow long enough to contain us both. I was staring at the camera, pudding-faced and wild-haired, and Sasha (blonde and adorable) was looking at me and laughing, while Mum was clearly the happiest woman in the world. Although I looked stupid in it, I absolutely loved it. I knew that Dad had taken it, but apart from that I loved everything about it.

I wondered whether he’d reply to my message. Surely he would.

‘You know when you were little,’ I said, looking at our young selves.

‘Yeah?’

‘Did you go to nursery?’

‘I went to Bouncers,’ she said, smiling. ‘It was lovely. I’d love to send this little bean there except it closed years ago. It had shut before your time. You went to that hippy place, didn’t you?’

I remembered the hippy place. I remembered singing and dancing and playing with water and playdough. Mostly, though, I remembered crying because I missed Mum. Some things didn’t change.

‘Was there a man in charge there?’ I said. ‘At Bouncers?’

Sasha screwed up her face. ‘There was a guy who used to come in with a guitar. But all the workers I remember were women. Why?’

I tried to speak casually, though my blood was pounding in my ears and my breathing had gone wrong. ‘I was reading a thing online. About a boy who went missing. Years ago, before I was born, but he went to our school. His dad worked at Bouncers. That was all. I stumbled across it and thought it was weird. That a teenager from our school vanished from this town. From the shopping mall. And he was never found. I wondered if his dad used to look after you at nursery. That was all.’

‘Oh, you mean Joe Simpson? Everyone knows about him. So are you saying it was his dad who did it? I don’t remember that at all. But it’s usually the parents, isn’t it?’

I shook my head. ‘Oh God, no. I don’t think it was his dad. I mean, maybe? Who knows? I just saw where his dad worked and I thought you went there. Nothing more than that.’

‘I guess he would have left that job after his son disappeared. Before my time. Joe Simpson probably ran away, you know? That’s what boys do. I’m pretty sure it’s what they decided in the end.’

Her hand went to her bump. We would make sure this boy never had any reason to run away.