My chest is burning, my stomach turning into a lump. There is a mahogany sideboard against the far wall, the wood peeling. I am terrified that Alice is trapped in it, starved of air. I yank open the doors so violently that the collage photo frame, which Eliza has brought with her from Bath, falls to the floor with a shatter of glass. The space inside the sideboard is empty.

I am calculating the amount of time Eliza and I were talking outside. Probably about fifteen minutes. Unlike the high lattices at the front of the house, there are sash windows in this room, large and low. Both are open.

Eliza is shaking her head, watching me take this in. ‘No. Oh no.’ The words come out in a squeak. ‘It was so stuffy in here, and damp-smelling. We needed air.’

We are running together to the window. About three metres away from the house, dropped in the high grass, is the stuffed kitty I remember Alice playing with on her first visit to the Paediatric Unit.

‘Is there any way that could have got there other than by Alice dropping it?’

Eliza is struggling to get her breath. ‘No. We came in through the front. We’ve barely left this room. I’ve been – frozen – since Zac told me he’d been with Jane. And Alice was so lethargic. She seemed not to want to move, so we snuggled while I read to her.’

‘Can Alice climb?’

She gulps. ‘We can’t keep her in her cot any more. She’s ready for a proper bed.’

Before Eliza has finished the sentence, I am opening the window wider and climbing out. ‘Call 999. She can’t have got far.’

‘I’ll go. I’m her mother.’

What I think is, No you’re not. But this isn’t the time for that fight. ‘I grew up in this sort of landscape. I can find her faster.’

‘I told her I’d take her to the cliffs to see the puffins.’

I manage a nod. Already I am turning away from her, though I hear her shouting that she can’t get a signal so she’s going to run up the lane to the main road to try for one.

My first instinct is simply to scream Alice’s name. Instead, I make myself crouch down, trying to see the world from her height, trying to imagine the steps she would take.

If I were nearly two years old, and searching for puffins, I would zero in on where the grown-up pointed. Sure enough, when I look closely, there is a line where the grass bends slightly outwards on both sides, showing the path Alice must have made by trampling through it. The line is like a faint arrow, aimed at the cliff. Slowly, I follow it.