It’s been three days since Grace went missing, three full days without any medication. Whenever I close my eyes I see a tiny mound in bed under white hospital sheets, the face changing from Grace to Jakey and back again. I sit up. Drink a pint of water. I need air, that’s what I need. I need something to remind me life exists outside my tiny one-bed flat, outside my own head. The bedroom window opens on to the lower high street but the sitting-room window is bigger, and opens to a series of wheat fields that eventually lead to the sea. There’s no breeze coming in from the street, so I pad across the sitting room, open the window wide, and feel my lungs expand like balloons as they fill.

Get a grip, Jon, get a fucking grip.

I take another lungful of air as a ghostly cry is carried along on the warm night. The cry comes again and again, like someone calling, pleading. I think of Meg. I think of Grace.

The shout comes again, clearer now, and I realize it’s her name: “Grace!” It’s like the night itself is calling for her to come home.

Am I actually going fucking nuts?

The shouts get louder and then I see glinting lights, like fireflies in the distance, and I realize it’s not Meg’s ghost and it’s not the night calling her name, it’s a search party. A very human search party with flashlights, loud voices, and reflective vests. They must be doing a sweep of all the fields that run down from the town to the beach.

“Grace! Grace!” they call. Before I can talk myself out of it, I grab my jeans from the bedroom floor and pull on a T-shirt. As I worm my feet into my Converse, I look at myself in the hall mirror to reassure myself that I look different from how I looked just before Christmas. I have a beard now, thick-rimmed glasses, and I’ve put on a few pounds since Jakey went back to school. Even if Susan and her mates are out there searching, especially in the dark, they’re unlikely to recognize me from the photos online. But I shove on a navy baseball cap just in case before I head out into the warm, salted air.

The bright moon hangs above us, lighting the way for the searchers as though it too wants to help find Grace. I read a couple of articles from the national papers claiming volunteer searches can hinder rather than help investigations. They said the searches around Ashford are well intentioned but unprofessional, random sweeps across the countryside into old abandoned mines and farmhouses, and that untrained eyes can miss key pieces of evidence. But neither the volunteers nor the police have found anything yet, so the jury’s still out as far as I’m concerned. And instead of a disorganized rabble, the search seems well organized. Most people have flashlights and the lines look ordered, the volunteers walking perfectly in time and only a few tasked with calling her name. They all keep their eyes fixed on the ground as they brush through the golden wheat fields. It seems unlikely she would have been taken across this field—it’s well used by dog walkers in the day and is too close to the high street to be private—but perhaps they’re searching the more public areas at night. Statistically, time is running out for Grace and there must be hundreds of square miles to search. I fall in step next to a woman at the end of the line. She’s around my mum’s age and wears a Barbour jacket under her reflective vest.