Torch in hand, coat on my back, legs still shaking, I set out with Imogen, Lucas and his mates. Sergeant Caruso was still in the forward command post, as he called it. The command post—our playgroup—which had no playing children, but police officers and now volunteers to help: soldiers, cyclists, office workers and churchgoers with plates of sandwiches and cakes. Hundreds of people. Marty wanted to search with me but I couldn’t stand to be near him. I’d failed Bella and I’d failed him. Again.

I prayed that Bella had curled up in a warm spot, protected from the cold. This time, we searched the route towards our home—trawling through the green strips between houses and roads. Fixing our torches on the little playgrounds hidden in the green spaces. When I had first arrived in Merrigang, I loved the secret footpaths connecting the crescents to the main roads. Now, these secret passageways provided hidey holes for a lost little girl.

With my face half-concealed by a beanie, the male volunteers didn’t recognise me. I could hear their conversations around me in the dark.

‘Why do you reckon she wandered off?’

‘Maybe one of the other kids was mean to her.’

Had that happened this morning? The twins were aggressive: they bit and hit and whacked and yelled. Imogen tried her best to control them but nothing seemed to work. Bella was resilient, though—she never seemed to be scared of Thomas and Matthew. Had she seen a bird or a butterfly and tried to follow it, pushing on the gate? Imagined a fairy floating in the sky? What would attract her attention? It was so unlike her that I just didn’t know.

‘Is there an ex-husband? Maybe he took her.’

‘Nah, apparently there’s an ex-wife with an older daughter in Sydney.’

I could imagine Victoria doing some ludicrous things to annoy her father, but kidnapping Bella was beyond her capabilities. Underneath the bluster, Victoria was a sweet girl. I was sure she loved Marty really.

‘What about the father himself?’

‘He’s a doctor and he was at the hospital. Anyway, why would he take her? They’re married and they live together. It’s not like that case where the dad threw the daughter off the bridge.’

‘What fucking bastard would do that to his own kid?’

Resting against a fence, I let the others move on ahead of me. Bella had wandered off, that was all. We’d find her, any moment now, hiding in a ditch or in someone’s back shed, desperate to come home.

‘I’ve got something here,’ one of the men called out.

A spark whooshed inside me, blazing away the coldness. I pushed past three volunteers to glimpse inside their circle of torchlight.

A single soft pink ballet slipper. Too big for Bella’s foot.