“You look like you’re thinking about joining us,” she says when she sees me.

I nod. “Would that be all right?”

She throws me a reflective vest from her pocket.

“Course! Grace needs all our help. Come next to me, I’ll get Martin to budge up a bit.” She calls to the man next to her: “We’ve got another joiner, move up the line!” The words echo along the volunteers and a space is made for me, and suddenly we’re together, the wheat scratching at my legs, and I feel calmer as I search in gentle time with these good people doing what they can to help.

Once we reach the end of the field the lady in the Barbour sighs and, unzipping her jacket, sits on a log. She pats the space next to her and smiles at me, like she’s expecting a little lap dog to leap up next to her. She pulls a thermos out of her huge pockets.

“A break at last!” she says with a chuckle as I come to sit next to her. She offers me a plastic mug.

“Oh no”—I wave my hand—“you’ve been out here much longer than I have—”

“Oh away with you. There’s plenty for us both.”

I take the cup and have a sip of tea. The tea is good—sugary and flavorful. I feel the woman looking at me.

“So, if you don’t mind me saying, you looked a bit dazed when you joined us earlier. Wake you up, did we?” she asks in her warm Cornish accent.

“Oh no, I always look like that,” I say with a smile, which she returns. “No, no, you didn’t wake me. I have trouble sleeping sometimes so thought I’d make myself useful.”

“Good for you!” she says, taking my empty mug. “We need all the help we can get, what with the police being so bloody useless—they don’t seem to understand how much Grace will be suffering after three days without her meds.” She shakes her head. “Sorry, but I just get so upset with it all. I’m Maggie, by the way,” she says, raising the cup in a silent toast before taking a sip. Maggie. A small bell in the back of my mind chimes but I’m too tired to figure out why.

“I’m Jon. So did you know Grace?”

Maggie looks suddenly stern.

“Oh no, love,” she says, “we’ll have no past tenses, thank you very much. But yes, to answer your question. I do know Grace, knew them both, Grace and her mum.” As she says it she leans forward and I see her T-shirt has the Wishmakers logo on the front. I remember Grace talked about a Maggie in her diary and my mind snaps like a twig: she’s Maggie from the Wishmakers. I spoke to Maggie when I first called the charity to ask if they had any families I could interview for my article. Although I told Maggie I was working with Dads Without Borders, I suspected she didn’t understand the real intention of the article, that I was on the side of the dads kept from their kids rather than the mums doing the keeping. Maggie immediately started telling me about Grace and Meg. She told me earnestly how Meg had called her just a few hours earlier, how devastated Meg was that Grace could no longer go to Hawaii. Maggie said an article about them could be the boost they both needed. I should have said something, explained the article in more detail, but even I’d heard about Meg, Grace, and Simon on the Ashford grapevine. I wanted to interview them as much as they wanted to be interviewed. I needed them for the article. I found it easy to shush my conscience and ask Maggie to give them a call.