Daniel waited until she looked him in the eye, and he held her gaze until she felt the need to repeat it, just as Beck appeared, fully-dressed, in the hallway door.

‘I’m ready,’ she said, briefly looking Daniel in the eye. Her hair was a mess.

‘We can go across to Wishaw, then up the coast. Roads are better that way,’ he said, seeing her calculate directions in her head. ‘Tell Alan we’ll be back tonight.’

Bill nodded. ‘Number one son can come out with me. I could do with a hand, with Tony away.’

‘Oh Bill, don’t go on,’ Doris said. ‘Let him sleep in, poor kid, all this fuss and nonsense about nothing.’

Beck went straight outside. Daniel grabbed his keys and followed her before the screen door could slam shut.

Beck watched Deloraine disappear in the side mirror of Daniel’s car. He jiggled his leg against the gearstick and cleared his throat all the way to the creek. When they turned onto the main road he shifted his backside, pulled the seat belt across his bulky frame, and looked at her.

‘We’re gonna find him, you know that?’

She couldn’t take in his face, so just nodded into her lap.

They’d searched for a missing child once before. The car moving towards any reliable report of Jamie was all she needed.

He sighed and flicked the radio on.

‘We’ll stop in at the Wishaw station and see if there’s been any more news.’

The weather report blared out. Rain was forecast from the Western Slopes to the Border Ranges. The newsreader made a stale and hopeful joke about it being enough to fill everyone’s tanks.

Beck smiled and nodded at the policeman behind the counter at Wishaw when he gave them the latest news, but only because she wanted him and Daniel to stop looking at her.

A teenage boy had been seen getting out of a truck heading north at a service station over the border. The same kid had been spotted shoplifting, dropped the goods and run off when the woman at the till had questioned him. Her description was a good match for Jamie.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and went for the car while Daniel wasted more time chatting with his colleague about cop bullshit.

Despite the hopeful news, the endless forested ridges of the ranges did nothing to improve her agitated state. She kicked the interior of the footwell so intensely that Daniel reached for her leg and stopped her. She flicked his hand away, folded her arms across herself and just watched the view.

Every time Daniel bashed the gearstick with a closed fist she couldn’t help wincing. When he wasn’t doing that, he was punishing the car into negotiating the bends, and none of her purposefully heavy sighs seemed to mean anything at all to him.