The gathering storm pressing down from above made her eyes hurt. Beside her in the doorway, the officer assigned to “look after” Lauren kept gripping at her own temples as if she were in pain, puffing out sighs. The air pressure was a boot on everyone’s head, adding to the atmosphere, the feeling, unbearable, that something had to happen soon or the consequences would be terrible. Out of all the police officers only Jo Harper seemed to have come dressed for the heat. Come to think of it, where the hell was Harper? Lauren hadn’t had a chance to speak to her properly before she’d disappeared again. Harper would understand, not like these uniformed monkeys. She’d let her join the search for her own children, for pity’s sake.

Something shifted in the air, loosening. A few fat spheres of rain smashed into the hot concrete of the path, throwing up dust from the gritted car park like angry gobfuls of phlegm, banging down on the tops of the police vehicles and the flat felted roof of the cafe. More fell, hard and sparse, but then the pressure escaped and the clouds burst and the rain poured out of the sky. Lauren felt the sharp missiles of water hitting her bare arms and the top of her head, painful, stinging. She did not move, even as a surge of people rushed past her into the shelter of the building.

Hair plastered to her face by the force of it, Lauren watched as the storm disrupted the surface of the Bishop, which turned brown and started to swell.

“Mrs Tranter, come inside, you’ll get cold,” said someone from behind her, one of the police. She ignored the suggestion. She liked being cold, it made a change. And she wanted to hurt, even in this small way. Physical pain was a distraction from the crushing dread and the rising panic.

On the other side of the river, Patrick’s car was pulling into the car park, windscreen wipers madly slashing, just as the first flash of lightning made her jump. The thunder followed, quick and loud as an explosion.