As a man who’d run a restaurant chain for as long as his daughters had had beating hearts, Father was alien to not manning the helm. By the time Jane and Anna had entered the house, they could already hear his raised voice in the living room as he tried to tell the police how to do their jobs. They heard him complain that they were sitting around using their laptops instead of kicking in doors to find his granddaughter. And they heard him mention his nickname for Nick – Lotus Eater. Jane grabbed Anna’s hand.

‘Let’s leave him to rant a bit,’ she said as she led her sister into the bedroom. Anna was happy to go because she didn’t want to hear her father further insult Nick. As they moved across the room, Jane caught her thigh on the bedroom dressing table. A quiet giggle slipped from Anna’s lips, but only because she needed an injection of levity to relieve building pressure.

‘We moved the dressing table a couple of days ago. Nick did mention that it might catch you out.’

Jane sat on the bed and removed her denim jacket. The Lycra top was sleeveless and exposed arms thin and muscled because of her exercise obsession, and bruised because of her eyes. ‘That reminds me of the time Nick said there were a couple of spiders dangling from the ceiling. Remember that? I felt trapped. Any other booby traps I should know about?’

‘Did I mention the sinkhole in the kitchen?’

Both women laughed. It seemed like becoming a mellow moment, as Jane intended, but Anna quickly crested the peak and descended again, fast as a runaway train. In the five seconds it took her to move to the dressing table and sit, she blurted everything Miller had told her.

There was a thoughtful pause before Jane responded: ‘Have they told you what they’re doing to find them?’

Anna stared into the mirror and lifted a cotton pad to scrape away the remaining dirt from her arms and face. But before the pad even touched her face, she dropped it to pull out the cordless and call Nick again. When she hung up, she saw Jane’s reflection behind hers.

‘Turning stones, that was the term they used. I guess it means they’re doing their thing, whatever they do. But they’re searching my house for clues.’

In the mirror, Jane’s left hand spun the large ring on the thumb of her right. She was hardwired for movement and couldn’t remain motionless – it was part of the reason exercise was an obsession. But here, instead, Anna read a nervous tic, and she didn’t like it. She knew something fresh was worrying her sister.