A smart gentleman with an educated southern accent was being interviewed about youth crime statistics. It caught Thomas’s attention because it echoed what his fourteen-year-old daughter had just been scolding him for. The figures were real. The man was a lecturer in criminology at the University of Newcastle. He spoke about how money was ploughed into prisons and yet reoffending rates were alarmingly high: the system was broken. Prison wasn’t working. He said that one year in detention for a young male aged between fifteen and seventeen cost the taxpayer over sixty thousand pounds. He argued that the money could be better spent on rehabilitation and community programmes.

Thomas rolled his eyes.

The stats showed not only that the system was expensive, but that inmates were reoffending at a disturbing rate upon release. The professor went on to say that conditions inside prisons were partly to blame and that self-harm rates among prisoners had risen almost one hundred per cent since 2013, while serious assaults on fellow inmates and staff had tripled in five years. The system was haemorrhaging employees and drowning in a sea of incarcerations.

On the screen behind the man, a bunch of youths could be seen by the barricade. As Thomas peered at the image, his blood went cold and he felt his whole body begin to tremble. His breath echoed in his head and the furniture in the room seemed to move around in slow motion as his eyes grew bulging in his head, transfixed on the image.

On the screen, behind the professor, talking to a bunch of youths, dressed as a down and out, he saw his son, Jordan, with the protesters, looking as though he’d been raised there. He shot off the bed and headed to Millie’s room to tell her that he had to go out urgently. He crashed through her door and was about to apologise for scaring her when he saw that the room was empty. Her bed was made, her computer and TV off, and her window wide open.

Her room had a pretty ironwork fire escape that led to the ground. He raced down the steps and towards the garage. The door was open, and he saw straight away that Millie’s new road bike was missing.

He knew exactly where she’d gone.

Chapter 39

The sun was climbing into the sky. No one in Penrith could see it because it was shrouded in cloud, but it was there, penetrating the dawn and announcing a new day.