I call Jacob’s mobile again and follow the sound to the front room, giving the bathroom and kitchen a cautionary glance as I pass by. There’s a pan on the stove and a bowl of pasta beside it, abandoned halfway through, it seems. I go in, lift the pan up to check that the gas ring isn’t on.

Jacob’s phone has stopped ringing, so I call it again before following its trail once more. It leads me to his jacket, slung casually over the back of a dining chair. The flashing screen lights up the blue lining and I reach in to reject the call.

Where the hell is he?

I slide the screen up, in the unlikely event that it will give me access without a password, but it immediately asks for the four-digit code.

‘Who goes anywhere without their phone these days?’ I ask aloud.

It’s then that I’m struck by the two fear-inducing options. The first being someone who doesn’t want to be found. The second: that they already have been.

10

I’d set my alarm for six thirty, ready to try to call Jacob again first thing, but it turns out that I didn’t need to be woken, as I never actually fell asleep.

I’d spent the night tossing and turning, going over everything Jacob had said and done in the lead-up to him disappearing off the radar. At one point, somewhere between four and five a.m., I’d tiptoed out of bed, careful not to wake Leon, and gone down to the garden office to retrieve Jacob’s file.

Taking it to my desk, I’d put the lamp on and pored over every scribble and nuanced doodle in the hope that something jumped out at me; a clue as to where he might be and who with.

Looking back on the notes from our first session, I’d asked him to tell me about a time in his life when he had been at his happiest. I often use it as the pathway to open up someone’s mind; to take them back to when they weren’t bogged down by the troubling thoughts and negative energy that had made them book an appointment to see me.

He’d told me about a week he’d spent at the beach in Whitstable, with his wife and three boys.

‘When was this?’ I’d asked.

‘Just over ten years ago,’ he’d said. ‘Before we bought a place here.’

‘And what was so special about it that you’re able to take yourself right back there, all this time later?’