The image came back to me perfectly clearly this time. The back of Brendan’s head as he stood at the counter of the bakery that morning. How could I have forgotten? What other memories had evaporated in my panic?

With our focus on Marty’s leg, neither of us noticed the lone cameraman standing by the wall. He must have been filming for a full minute before we saw him. How had he known we’d be there? Had the schoolteacher held a press conference for himself? I kept my head down, letting my hair fall across my eyes. Marty tucked his face into the top of my head. I could imagine the headline: MAD DAD BEATS UP INNOCENT TEACHER. Would the community stop helping in the search after reading yet another negative story about us?

At home, I ran a hot bath for Marty and took one of Mel’s dinners from the fridge. It looked like a meat stew with vegetables and lentils. I couldn’t eat it but Marty would want something. When Mum had been dying, I’d cooked endless amounts of food and stayed to eat dinner with them. I thought it helped Dad to have people in the house, but now I wondered if it had annoyed him, interfering with his time with Mum. Right now, food was the last thing on my mind.

Darkness would fall again soon. After the brilliant sunshine today, clouds now blanketed the sky. Good, the temperature wouldn’t drop so much. Was Bella really out there somewhere? I had a crazy idea that a kind old lady had found Bella, taken our daughter into her house and cooked up tomato soup. Canned tomato soup. With hot buttery toast for Bella to dip into it. The old lady had dementia and that was why she hadn’t called the police. She thought Bella was her granddaughter. But soon, her son would visit, find Bella in the house and contact the police. Then my Tinker Bell would be home with us, safe and sound.

Other thoughts crowded in but I ignored them. This was the story I chose.

Through the back sliding door, small speckles of rain glittered in the floodlit garden. I’d turned on all the lights around the house, and the lights downstairs too. In case Bella was trying to find her way home. I knew it was impossible—there was no way Bella would walk through the front door by herself. But the terrifying thoughts crept in with the dark.

The house was too quiet, my thoughts too loud.

The night-time searchers would be lining up at playgroup soon. I couldn’t go out there again. It wasn’t the suspicious faces—I could force myself to deal with those if it meant finding Bella—but the ability to carry on. Every time a searcher had found something on the ground and the line halted, my heart pounded and my breathing stopped.