Usually, a uniform would speak to the parents – the visit of a senior officer like Sasha could make the Mannings more anxious – but she had been rattled by last night’s report of an abduction and wanted to talk to them herself. The witness was an emotional wreck, but Lydia Tide – a former abductee herself – had been convinced she saw a girl being bundled into a van. Sammi’s subsequent disappearance was an uncomfortable coincidence.

The girl certainly didn’t fall into any of the high-risk categories of kids who tended to go missing. She lived in a respectable middle-class home, she wasn’t homeless or living in care, or involved in gangs, and she wasn’t previously known to the social services.

The parents told Sasha that their daughter had left the house at six the previous evening, while Alan was still at work and Jessica was in the kitchen. Her mother heard the door slam. Phoning around later, piecing together her movements, they established that Sammi joined a group of girlfriends hanging out on the High Street for an hour.

‘Her friends said she got a text and left them.’

‘A text – who from?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Did you argue with Sammi last night, did she leave the house upset?’

‘Is she punishing us, do you mean?’ Jessica perched again on the sofa to rub her hands up and down her shins. ‘We’d had words earlier because she’d earned a detention for talking in class, she can be a chatterbox in lessons, but it was hardly a row, certainly nothing that would make her storm off and not come back.’

‘Which school does she go to?’

‘Hanley Cross.’

‘There’s no easy way to ask this, but does Sammi… get down at all, or anxious?’

‘Does she get depressed, you mean? She’s a happy girl, the life and soul.’

‘And has she ever been absent from home before?’

‘What is this absent word?’ said Alan Manning. ‘She’s not absent, that makes it sound like she’s standing outside the room, she’s missing.’

Sasha ignored his testy response. ‘Can you tell me what she was wearing?’

Jessica closed her eyes, trying to remember. ‘She usually wears leggings and a loose top, but she was in her room until she went out, so I can’t say for sure. Her silver puffa jacket is gone.’

Sasha didn’t like the sound of that. Lydia had said last night that the girl she saw being abducted had been wearing something shiny.

‘We’ve rung her phone constantly since last night,’ said Alan. ‘But it’s switched off.’

‘You’ve spoken to her friends.’