Her cheeks warmed at this half-confession of her interest in the Harlows. She hated the image of herself as a nosy neighbor or a bored spectator of others’ lives. Was that what she’d become since her shop had closed, since Zeb had left?

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

Emma looked toward her window as if to re-create her last sighting of Freya. There she was in a navy Puffa jacket, ponytail flopping to one side as she paused to read something on her phone. Was Emma’s memory tainted by the knowledge that Freya had vanished, or had the teenager really seemed subdued? Had she hunched her shoulders as she’d studied her phone?

She recalled now that Steph had come out of the house, calling after her daughter. Freya had looked irritated, shoving her phone into her pocket as she’d spun around. Steph had handed her what looked like a couple of banknotes, and touched Freya’s arm before she’d left. Did Steph remember that casual see-you-later touch? Had she been replaying it endlessly? Perhaps convincing herself, as Emma was now, that Freya hadn’t responded, had maybe even shrugged her off.

“I guess I’ve seen her happier,” Emma said.

“Was she upset?”

“No, no. She just wasn’t as full of beans as she sometimes seems.”

“Have you noticed other changes in her recently?”

“I don’t really know her.”

“But you did notice she was less . . . ‘full of beans’ on Thursday?” The PC said it like Emma had coined the phrase.

“It was just an observation. I only saw her for a moment. And I . . . I wouldn’t like to say what’s normal behavior for her.”

But Freya’s demeanor that morning had snagged her attention, even if she was only properly registering it now. Mainly because Freya’s carefree bounciness had been a source of amazement to her for a while. Her own experience of being a teenager had been so different, so bogged down by self-consciousness and insecurity.

“What about her parents?”

Emma blinked. “What about them?”

“Any observations about Mr. or Mrs. Harlow?”

She seemed to have been cast in the role of observer. But even before Freya’s disappearance, hadn’t her impressions of her neighbors often changed with her moods? Mostly their family life had appeared golden, but on her more bitter days, which she was ashamed to think of now, she’d been able to persuade herself it was all a front.

“They’re going through something unimaginable,” she said. “I’ve never even heard them argue before.”

The woman looked at her keenly. “Does that mean you have since?”

“A-a few raised voices. Understandable in the circumstances.”