‘Dan?’ the male voice said as he lifted the receiver and held it to his ear.

‘Yep?’

‘Macca here. Listen, it’s about the missing boy. We’ve just had a report of a sighting from a truckie who called it in from the border before midnight.’

‘Right,’ Daniel said. ‘I’ll go inform the mother.’

Beck felt as though a clear stream was flowing out of her mouth, leaving the kind of scent you pick up near a drain. She was sure her boys were down below, playing in a series of pools, but with the water pouring out of her mouth she couldn’t make herself heard. If she tried to yell, all that came from inside her was a gurgling.

As she woke with a start, her tongue dry apart from the line of saliva that ran down her cheek onto the pillow, the end of her cry was still escaping from her mouth.

Something had happened. One of the dogs was whimpering. Sunlight streamed through the French doors from the verandah, but the angle of it told her that it was still early. On the far side of the dark field, mist was rising over The Mulgas, drawing her old home out of the shadows, and she remembered Jamie.

Beck knew by experience that it was going to be a long, long time before she’d have this solitude again, so she pulled her heels up towards her bottom and twisted the sheet against her chin to wipe the spit away. Her neck was stiff, so she stretched it back and into the pile of pillows at her head, which knocked two of them off and revealed something crinkly behind her neck.

She reached for it and found the leaflet for the hotel where Leanne and Tony had gone on their honeymoon.

Fast and incomplete visions of her own honeymoon came to mind. Daniel on the beach at Norfolk Island, caressing her leg, that boyish look on his face, the same look he’d give her for the next decade whenever he’d wanted sex.

In the distance, Yvonne let out one of her sharp, excited sounds, then a lower voice was added to the mix: Daniel.

Beck got up and dug around for the robe. It had spilled onto the floor and now looked as though it was reaching out to the closed door, arms raised in a panic. She broke its pose by picking it up and pulling it around her, and went for the door.

The deep tones of Constable Brandt sounded underneath the noise of Doris clattering in the pantry, so she crept up the other way, where Tony’s bedroom door was ajar. Alan wasn’t in there, so she went further to where the hallway door gave onto the enclosed verandah.