He started the search without much expectation of success, though his record of finds was still superior to Kirsty’s, a fact that subtly needled her, as though it somehow implied he knew their daughter better than she did, that he had insights she didn’t share. He began with the jeans Ella had been wearing that afternoon, turning out the pockets but finding only scraps of tissue paper, a silver nickel, a Gummy Bear. Then he eased off the head of a chubby-limbed doll, one of those which, when squeezed, complained that she was wet, or pleaded hunger, or said ‘I love you’. Ella had once hidden an old-world silver chain here, one that Kirsty had inherited from Grandma Friebergs, but tonight the head contained only air and a whiff of something feebly toxic, some humid residue of its manufacture adhering to the inverted features of the skull. Next, he investigated her collection of seashells, picking up each in turn and shaking it in the hope that one would rattle. None did. The music box, which he had bought for her in London, was another old hiding place, all the more cunning in that it could not be searched without sounding its own alarm. He flipped open the lid and shook it out, spilling a half-dozen pinlike notes of ‘Oranges and Lemons’, but nothing fell into his waiting hand. He slid open the drawers in the dresser and probed the neatly ordered knickers and vests, the bundled socks and tights, then lifted the front wall from the doll’s house and used his key-ring torch to check beneath beds the size of Amex cards, and the delicate spidery dining table where he had once located his ITF cuff links, but where now there was only a wooden family in felt suits, mama, papa and two stiff children, sat before a porcelain ham like people under a spell.

He retired to the window, rubbed at the stiffness in his neck, and gazed through the weave of the Dream Catcher to where the bay lights were heaped up against the night. She was undoubtedly getting better at this. In the beginning she had not understood the necessary feints and anticipations good hiding required, but she had learned. Her hiding places had become increasingly sophisticated, even possessing a certain teasing quality that gave weight to Professor Hoffmann’s theory that the ‘borrowed’ items were always intended to be found. This was not pilfering, a simple case of childhood kleptomania. Hoffmann had not decided on a name for it yet. He was still collecting the evidence.

He heard her turning under the sheet, and whispered, ‘You awake, El?’