It was an ordeal to talk them through everything, to relay facts that felt as if they were about someone else’s daughter, neighbors, family. Steph watched Brian for a reaction when she mentioned the police’s questions about whether she or Paul had enemies. He started twisting his watch around his wrist again, its strap catching on his dark hairs. There was an odd expression on his face, glazed yet intense, reminding her of Paul when he disappeared into himself.

You know something, she thought, with sudden conviction. Not about Freya, perhaps, but about your son. Do you know something I don’t?

—

The three of them sat in the living room and each took up a task. Steph pored through her address book for anyone she hadn’t yet thought of who might have heard from Freya. Heather did the same, with her wider circle of family and friends. Brian had a long phone conversation with their family liaison officer, then reverted to detective mode, making a timeline of the day Freya had last been seen. Another back-to-front thought occurred to Steph: Freya would have loved to help him with this. Writing down clues, following a trail, solving a puzzle. She used to say she wanted to be a detective when she grew up, until she’d got older and had seemed to pick up on her dad’s reluctance to talk about his police career.

So much for no topic being off-limits, Steph thought again, the parenting book’s words still vivid in her mind.

As soon as Heather left the room to make some calls, she turned to her father-in-law.

“Brian, why did Paul leave the police force?”

He looked startled.

“I . . . Well, I thought you . . .” His fingers plucked at the knees of his once-smart trousers, his hands just like Paul’s. “Why do you ask?”

He seemed to mean, Why do you ask now?

Steph didn’t answer. Let her question float between them. She remembered it had taken months to get to know Paul when they’d first met. To peel back the layers of him. There had been so much he wasn’t allowed to tell her about his job, about why he was on indefinite leave from the force and seeing a therapist once a week. But back then she’d become convinced she’d found the real soft core of him. She hadn’t cared about anything else. Perhaps the idea of a fresh start, no looking back, had appealed to her too.