Dear Dr. Rossi,

Thank you for giving my mum a job. She’s so happy! Thank you for always making sure me and Mum have everything we need. We are lucky to have friends like you!

Big Kiss,

Grace xxx

I read the note again and again until my voice becomes Grace’s voice and she feels a bit closer, a little safer. I put the card carefully to one side and, as I drop the now-empty sketchpad back in the box, a small envelope I hadn’t seen before slithers out of the pad. On the front, Grace has written:

Granddad

Resthaven Nursing Home

Plymouth

I turn the card over. It looks as though Grace had sealed the envelope and then opened it again. I slide my finger inside the ragged edge of the opening and pull out a small photo. The tightness returns to my throat, gripping harder now. The photo is of a man, old and crumpled in his chair, but his rheumy eyes sparkle as he looks at the little girl sitting on his lap. Grace looks about three in the photo; she’s turning her small face back towards the old man. Behind them both, with one hand on the old man’s shoulder and the other on Grace’s knee, is the youngest, slimmest Meg I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing written on the back of the photo and, uncharacteristically, Grace didn’t write a note, or it’s been lost. This photo—this memory—was something Grace clearly wanted to share with her granddad, so why did the photo end up here, waiting to be taken to the dump? Sitting here, surrounded by his scuffed shoes and his dusty books, I think how I’d love to get a message to my granddad if I could. Clearly Grace, at one time, wanted the same. The burn in my throat has at last given away to tears. I sit on the floor and cry as I stare at the picture of Grace as a toddler. I could have been so much better, I should have been kinder, more patient, more like the big sister she always wished I’d be, the big sister she so badly needed. I let myself cry. But I know it’s pointless, there’s too much, I’ll never be able to cry my guilt away. When I can’t cry anymore, I wipe my eyes and decide to look up the full address of the care home and the doctor’s office. I’ll post these remembrances from Grace to Dr. Rossi and to Grace’s granddad. There may not be much I can do anymore, but I can do this small thing. Glancing at my watch, I realize it’s 10:45 a.m. already. Shit. I grab a couple of envelopes from the kitchen and shove them in my backpack. I’m going to be late.

I drive through the estate, past the squat row of red-brick shops—the newsagent’s and the post office, the Star Inn with its blacked-out windows, the butcher’s, and finally the Style Rooms. There’s a short queue of people standing on the pavement outside the salon and Sylvia, clutching a clipboard, is talking to them. Inside, Mum’s leaping around like a cricket, talking quickly on her mobile, and Martin is bending over a map alongside volunteers in his reflective vests. In the window there are three huge posters of Meg and Grace holding hands, with a number to call underneath their smiling faces. I only recognize some of the volunteers, neighbors mainly, standing on the pavement waiting to be told what to do. A balding bloke perhaps in his late thirties stares at me with cold eyes as I pass, and I realize, if Simon doesn’t have her, the person who took her could be anyone, someone we know, or someone we’ve never met. They could even be one of the volunteers outside the salon now, pretending they don’t already know where she is.