Don’t wallow. There’s far worse suffering going on inside this house. Her thoughts lurched back to Freya and her gut did a somersault. She’d been missing for more than twenty-four hours now. All was silent above. Normally she’d smell the Harlows’ dinner (always something super-nutritious, she’d imagine, trying to guess the ingredients from the scent), and hear them moving around, transitioning into their evening, pipes humming with showers and baths. She never sensed the same hubbub of activity from the basement flat, never felt anything like it inside her own anymore. It was as if all the warmth and energy of the building rose to the top two floors. Or had done, before Freya’s disappearance had extinguished it.

Emma went to her kitchenette and poured an Aldi gin with enough ice to anesthetize her brain. Crunching the cubes between her teeth, she perched on her sofa and felt the silence bear down. She’d had to move some furniture to fit more boxes in, so the light and shade in her living room now pooled in different places, adding to the sense that everything was out of kilter.

The sound of an engine outside grabbed her attention. She rushed to the window and saw Steph unfurling from the back of a police car, looking more disheveled than Emma had ever seen her, then running toward the house with her hand over her mouth. Paul followed, pausing to say something to the police officer in the driver’s seat before hurrying to catch up with his wife. Emma’s stomach knotted tighter. It was futile to keep watching, hoping Freya would bounce out of the same car and overtake her parents on the stairs, but she realized that was what she was doing, her hands gripping the sill, her face inching closer to the pane.

Only her video-call ringtone pulled her from the window. A ray of hope shone through and she dived toward her laptop. Her eagerness drained when she saw it wasn’t a Skype from Zeb. Instead her mum’s image filled the screen, nightly wine in hand, the other waving in an exaggerated fashion as though to catch the attention of someone a hundred meters away.

“Hi, Mum.” She tried not to sound deflated.

“How are you?” Lately there was a tilt to Julie’s head whenever she asked this question. “Just thought I’d give you a quick call while our dinner’s in the tagine.”

“What are you having tonight?” Emma asked dutifully. Her mum had attended cookery courses based around every major national cuisine.

“Kefta mkaouara with Moroccan bread,” Julie reeled off. “Have you had your hair cut?”

Emma touched her newish fringe. “About a week ago.”