‘Are you completely sure you’re writing them down right?’ Charley asks, but Izzy doesn’t answer. Charley doesn’t want to play, but if she does that means there are more of them, which means Blake’s less likely to lose. It doesn’t help because Blake ends up losing anyway. He’s brave, her brother, braver than her, because he doesn’t make one sound. She is the one who ends up with tears streaming down her face.

9. November

Eve

Eve is no longer underwater. She can see more clearly; everything is bright as if floodlit. Voices are loud as though everyone is shouting; most people are shouting. It’s been two hours since Sorrel went missing. Police officers have swarmed on to the property, accompanied by dogs, German shepherds moving fast, noses to the ground. A helicopter hovers above the garden, beams are directed on to the wood and the meadow and the surrounding streets. Men are searching the garage, the barns, Igor’s bungalow, the garden shed, fanning out into the woods. Voices echo from between the trees. Sorrel is scared of shouting and bright lights and dogs she doesn’t know; she could be too scared to come out.

An incident room is being set up in a van outside the gates. A police constable sits next to Eve in the kitchen, a dark-haired young Welsh woman called Brenda. The woman’s lilting voice is warm with sympathy. ‘What was Sorrel wearing before she vanished?’

‘A red anorak.’ The colour had glowed against the trees when she was playing in the garden earlier; red for danger, no one thought of that.

‘Where are her favourite places?’

‘The wood down the garden.’ Is that still true? She’d looked unhappy out there today, it was obvious, even at a distance. ‘Or in the kitchen near me.’

‘So where were you when she went missing?’

Brenda’s young, that’s the trouble, far too young. Her face is unlined, untried. What experience would she have in looking for missing children? Does she have any of her own?

‘Mrs Kershaw?’

‘Sorry, what—’

‘Where were you when she vanished?’

‘In bed.’

Brenda is scribbling something in her notebook; she might be writing that Eve is lazy and careless, criminally careless twice over. Eve looks away from that fast-moving pen; snow has arrived as forecast, white flakes whirling in the brilliant searchlights of the helicopter. Sorrel has waited all year to play in the snow.

‘I have to go; it’s cold out there, she might be—’