Still. There was a church on the other side of the road, the main gate directly opposite the door.

And when he had got out of the car he had looked at that gate. He remembered it distinctly: his sister had got married there and a memory had come to him of her wedding day. It had been pouring with rain – a real deluge – and when Tessa and Andy came out all the guests had been holding umbrellas over the path to make a tunnel. They had walked through them to the main road and into the vintage silver Rolls-Royce that had taken them to the reception.

He had looked at the gate and remembered that day.

And when he had done so he had been standing more or less opposite it.

Which meant the car had moved.

His palms prickled with sweat. The kids must have taken off the handbrake, or somehow started the car and driven it off. He patted the pocket of his jeans. The keys were in there, so at least that was off the table.

He forgot the newspaper and jogged to the door. He needed to sort this out, right away. The man behind the counter coughed.

‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes. Just – I can’t remember where I left my car.’

‘Happens all the time, mate. People forget where they park.’

‘It’s not exactly that—’ He stopped talking. There was no point explaining. He opened the door and looked up and down the street.

The car was nowhere to be seen.

He took a deep breath. His mind was starting to swim and he needed to concentrate. He couldn’t afford to panic. He had to be methodical, but it was almost impossible to fight back the desire to scream and set off at a sprint in some – any – direction.

He looked left, to the village centre, and then right, to the swing bridge over the ship canal. In both directions the street was more or less straight, so he would have seen his car if it was there.

It wasn’t.

‘Where’s the fucking car?’ he murmured. It couldn’t just be gone.

But it was. His car was gone, with his kids inside. He began to lose the battle against the fear and panic, because either they had moved it, or it had moved itself, or someone else had moved it. None of them were happy thoughts. As the thought sunk in, he clenched his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms. He had to think.

It couldn’t have been driven away, because he had the keys – there was no way the kids had jump-started it – which meant it had rolled away – hard to imagine on a flat road, and even harder to imagine it had rolled out of sight – or it had been pushed away.

His kids couldn’t have done that, so someone else would have had to do it.