Pushing open the door to the school hall I slide my way in, grabbing the first available seat at a table tucked into the corner. It’s busy, the air buzzing with conversation as volunteers bustle about, some of them wearing T-shirts with Laurel’s face on, and obviously, the talk is all of the same topic. Laurel.

It was a complicated mission to get here this morning, one which involved creeping along the path that runs through the back garden and sliding through the battered wooden gate at the end, cap pulled down low over my forehead so that the press didn’t see me. My heart skips as I think about the potential fallout if a picture of me appears on the front page of a national newspaper. Thankfully none of the hurried snaps they took on Sunday evening as I opened the door made it to the pages of the newspapers. It’ll be OK. I’ve changed my hair, lost weight. I’m barely recognisable as the old me anymore. That’s what I tell myself anyway, but you can never be too careful.

Hence that’s why I am sitting on my own in the school hall, the hub of the volunteer search centre, instead of accompanying Dominic and Fran to the television appeal. Fran protested at first when I said I didn’t think I should be there. My mouth went dry with panic that she would demand an explanation as to why I didn’t want to go, but I was forgetting that the old Fran isn’t here anymore, that we’re dealing with this new, raw, broken Fran. She gave in almost immediately, too tired or too fragile to argue when Dominic agreed that I should stay home.

So, I watched them both leave this morning from the window, peering out from the between the blinds as Dominic chivalrously helped Fran into a waiting unmarked car, as DS Wright got into the driver’s seat, as they drove away towards the main road – the few greedy, grasping press who haven’t already left for the appeal chasing after them – before hiding myself away in here.

I keep my head down as I wait for the appeal to start, but it doesn’t stop someone hovering in the periphery of my vision, and I look up to see the woman from before. Ruth, I think she said her name was. She stands to one side of me, close enough that I can smell soap on her skin, a harsh carbolic scent.