His nerves were in tatters. He took an energy drink from the fridge and downed it. Just as he finished, a text pinged in on his phone. Eden? He looked at it and saw to his dismay it was from her mother.

Any news?

Time to call the police, he decided. But on what number? Two weeks ago, a drunk shitbag he’d picked up in his cab in the centre of Brighton, who he’d driven to north of Gatwick Airport, had done a runner on him in a Redhill housing estate, leaving him with forty quid on the meter. He’d called the police 101 non-emergency number the following morning to report it. It had been seventeen minutes before it was answered. He’d been assured by the operator to whom he gave the details that someone would be in touch. But no one had.

To hell with that.

He dialled 999.

It was answered on the third ring. ‘Emergency, which service, caller?’

‘Police, please.’

There was a brief wait, then he heard a polite, assured voice.

‘Sussex Police, how may I help you?’

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m worried that something’s happened to my wife. She’s disappeared.’

‘May I have your name and address, please, sir?’

He gave the details to her.

The call handler asked him for his wife’s name, age, date of birth and address, which he gave her, struggling for a moment to remember whether Eden had been born on 2 or 3 March 1988. He settled on 3 March.

‘Can you please give me a full description of your wife and the clothes she was wearing when you last saw her?’

He repeated the description he’d given to the security guy at the store the day before, adding in a few extra details. ‘She’s thirty-one, five seven, shoulder-length, straight brown hair, wearing a pink T-shirt and white shorts.’ Then, remembering, he suddenly realized he’d given the security man a wrong description. She’d been wearing her hair up yesterday, pulled back and clipped into a kind of bun, the way she wore it when she couldn’t be bothered to wash it. He corrected the description to the call handler.

Continuing, sounding as if she might be reading from a script, she asked Niall what he thought might have happened, and if he could describe in as much detail as possible the circumstances of her disappearance.

He told her all he knew.

Next, sounding even more like she was working off a script, she asked him for information about her family, friends and work colleagues.

He answered in as much detail as he could.

When he had exhausted the list, she asked him, ‘Does your wife have any previous history of disappearing?’

‘No, never.’

‘She’s never gone missing before?’

‘No – OK, she did do something about a year ago, when we’d had a row. She went into a supermarket and bumped into a friend, and asked her to give her a lift home, leaving me waiting in the car. She did that just to get back at me.’