It wasn’t Gilbert’s exercise regime that disturbed Emma’s sleep that night. It wasn’t even the phantom pings of longed-for messages on her phone. Instead it was movement and voices overhead, a dance of disquiet that suggested the Harlows’ world had not settled back to normal since Steph’s fraught phone calls earlier in the evening.

Emma probably wouldn’t have been sleeping, anyway. Lately her worries were as nocturnal as her hamster, her brain churning with images that would make her reach for the notepad next to her bed, drawing them in thick pen-strokes to try to purge them. She’d always been a compulsive doodler. A scribble in the corner of her schoolwork would escalate into a carnival of figures or a catalog of designs. But, just like back then, there was a spiky anxiousness to the faces and shapes she now sketched.

She kicked her duvet aside and snatched her dressing gown from its hook. Her phone told her it was ten past midnight. As she padded through her flat, the night turned her furniture into crouching lumps, her framed photos into colorless oblongs and squares. The rattle of Gilbert’s wheel mingled with the sounds from above, creating the impression that he was controlling the neighbors’ conversation, cranking it up, like an organ grinder.

She hesitated at the under-stairs cupboard. Told herself she was simply checking on her pet. When she opened the cage Gilbert didn’t even pause, trawling onward as though he had targets to reach. There was nothing else to do once she’d topped up his water (and marveled at his total indifference to her), but Emma didn’t move.

The voices were audible here. As clear as Steph’s had been earlier. There were four now, though: Steph’s and Paul’s were so familiar to her, but different tonight, distorted by anxiety, and it didn’t take long to work out that the other two were police. A shiver rolled down Emma’s spine. She hadn’t been aware of the police arriving: She must’ve slept for a while after all. She’d heard Paul get home around eight thirty p.m.—car door slamming, footsteps shaking the stairs—and she’d been drawn again toward the cupboard: Would he have news of Freya? What would he and Steph say to each other? Would they be pragmatic or panicked, bickering or united? Then her phone had beeped and she’d spun toward the sound, boomeranging back to her own life.