So was she overreacting now? Was it so unusual for Freya’s phone to be off? Steph checked the clock again—6:20 p.m.: almost two hours beyond her normal home time. She couldn’t stop leaving messages, anxiety strangling her attempts to sound breezy: Drop me a text, Frey . . . She inhaled slowly and cradled the breath in her lungs. At work when she needed to regain her calm, she’d stand at the giant window and watch a plane taking off, rising into the sky, her frustration somehow lifting with it. And she’d anchor herself to the floor below her feet.

She went to the tall sash windows of their living room, scanning for peaceful sights. The sun dissolving to pink on the suburban horizon. Silhouetted roofs of terraced houses, doorways flooding with light as people came home. For a moment she was comforted by her familiar slice of Kingston upon Thames, hovering between winter and spring. But as she leaned to see down the road, eager to spot Freya pacing along with a disgruntled bus-didn’t-show-and-my-phone-died look about her, Steph’s stomach clenched. The wind picked up, rattling the street’s two rows of trees, which in a few weeks would sing with color but now looked skeletal and stripped.

Paul wasn’t answering his phone either. His gym nights had recently crept from three a week to four, helping him unwind after being cooped up in the office. He was like Freya in that way, like a kid who needed to be tired out, batteries exhausted, before they’d settle. Though Steph wasn’t as sporty as her husband and daughter, she understood Paul’s hatred of being manacled to a desk. She was always on the move at work, trying to give the impression of gliding serenely about when actually she was whirling between wine deliveries, staff shortages, and catering-related crises.

Now she made a deal with herself and her pounding heart. She would change out of her work clothes, pour herself a drink, chop the veg, and if she still hadn’t heard anything she’d start calling Freya’s friends.

That wind was rattling the window frames now. Howling in the roof above Freya’s attic conversion, or “penthouse suite,” as they jokingly called it. Steph hurried to close all their curtains, briefly comforted by the soft, weighty fabric dropping across darkening glass. In the kitchen, the steaks she’d taken out of the freezer that morning were seeping watery blood onto the breakfast bar. The oven clock flashed 18:50. Steph swallowed some wine, seized asparagus and a green pepper from the fridge. Then she cheated on her deal. Threw down the vegetables but didn’t chop. Reached for her phone and started dialing instead.