Dominic’s face has been splashed across every tabloid and broadsheet, dominating the online news and flashing across the screen every time we turn on the television, so now we don’t bother at all. MONSTER and PERVERT are the words that have been used most commonly to describe him, and I’ve deleted the BBC news app off my phone in an attempt to avoid the news as much as I can. Fran has said very little over the past few days, and seems reluctant to discuss anything, although Kelly says we should try to keep her talking, as it’s not good to bottle things up. I know Fran, I know she’ll talk when she’s ready.

The smell of bonfire smoke wakes me early one morning, and for one stomach-lurching moment I am back in the field, mud and straw beneath my feet, fireworks bursting above my head as I scream Laurel’s name into the inky darkness, desperate to see her sparkly silver bobble hat heading towards me. I sit bolt upright, my hair sticking to my forehead and a prickling under my armpits as I realise I’m at home, and Laurel is still gone, and Dominic is still not talking on where we might have a hope in finding her.

I push myself to get out of bed, wandering downstairs in a thick hoody and a pair of jogging bottoms. It’s the week before Christmas, and the sky is full of thick, heavy grey clouds that look as though they’re bursting to dump a ton of snow over the country. Shivering, I step out of the back door to where the source of the bonfire smoke reveals itself. Fran stands in front of a roaring fire, methodically feeding scraps of fabric into it. She wears only a thin T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, and her feet are shoved into an old pair of flip-flops.

‘Jesus, Fran, aren’t you freezing?’ I come and stand next to her, holding my hands to the warmth of the flames.

‘I hadn’t really noticed,’ she says, pushing what looks like a pair of trousers into the bonfire, poking at it with a broken tree branch she’s grabbed from the dead apple tree at the bottom of the garden. ‘I suppose it is quite cold.’ She looks around, as if noticing for the first time the thick clouds above and the brisk wind that bites at her bare skin.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, softly. She looks so fragile, her thin arms bare, standing there in what must the clothes she slept in. She looks nothing like the Fran I knew from before – the fierce, demanding Fran, always perfectly made up, always too busy living in a fantasy world made up of adoring audiences, dashing leading men and thick pan stick make-up to pay much attention to what was going on in her own family, under her own roof.