And yet he didn’t know what to feel. Sadness? Relief? Fury? Deep inside, he knew that what Yvette had told him was huge. But he couldn’t bring his reaction to the surface alongside everything else. He just wanted to nuzzle his face into his wife’s hair, shut his eyes and open them to see Freya behind her, smiling and sleepy, in her polka-dot pajamas.

Imagine if he got home to find her there. If there was an explanation so simple he’d looked right past it. Looked in the wrong direction.

As he neared the house, he noticed Steph’s car wasn’t on the street. Two police cars were parked in its place. That wasn’t so unusual: Police had been there constantly over the last few days, but something about them suggested a flurry of activity. One had its doors open, leaking the buzz of a radio. An officer got out of the other and headed toward Paul.

“Mr. Harlow.” It was dark enough for him not to notice Paul’s injuries. Paul stood as upright as he could, braced. “There’s been an incident.”

Paul’s heart juddered. Would it be Freya? Before he could speak, the officer said: “An abusive note was pushed through your door.”

“Abusive? Saying what?”

“It’s been taken away for examination. But it said . . .” The man shone a light at his book and read awkwardly, without glancing up: “‘Mother of the year—question mark. Try liar of the decade. Innocent victim—question mark. Nobody but yourself to blame.’”

Paul labored to compute the words. Liar? Blame? Each one felt like a pendulum swinging hard in his skull.

Mother?

The officer cleared his throat. “Mrs. Harlow and your neighbor Miss Brighton chased a man—”

“Chased him? What? Are they okay?” He glanced to the left, where Steph’s car should have been, and felt the churn of alarm that had become a constant companion. “Where’s my wife?”

“We . . . don’t know.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“Miss Brighton fell. An ambulance took her to hospital, and we arrived at the scene, but . . . Mrs. Harlow had gone.”

“Gone?”

“Somehow, among all the activity, she disappeared. Nobody’s answering the buzzer to your flat. Has she been in touch with you?”

Paul shook his head, cursing his smashed phone, his own distraction. The alarm was taking on a new color now. More sinister, bewildering. But awakening too. “Who was the man?”

“He fled, I’m afraid. We’re doing everything we can to track him down.”

Paul swore softly, turning toward his house. “I’ll check the flat.”