Anna blurted her tale. It drew Jane’s equivalent of a gasp of shock: just slow, heavy breathing, in part because she knew a show of distress would add to Anna’s own. But it didn’t help to calm Anna’s fizzing nerves.

‘My god. What are the police doing to find them?’

‘They’re coming round now. They say I have to stay here. I can’t look for them.’

‘Look, I’ll get ready and come round. Father will drive us there immediately. But do as the police say, Anna. Stay there.’

‘They didn’t go out, Jane. They wouldn’t. Why would Nick take Josie out? Why wouldn’t he wake me up first?’

‘I’ll be there in the next few minutes, Anna, okay? Just sit and wait for me, and for the police. Don’t go out to look for them. But phone people. Phone everyone you can think of.’

‘Father will blame me, Jane. He’ll think I left a door unlocked.’

‘No. No. No one is going to blame you. Nick will have taken Josie out somewhere, that’s all. Just stay. I’m coming.’

Anna desperately clutched that notion: maybe Josie had been hurt in the night, might have fallen when she went to the bathroom. Unwilling to panic Anna, Nick had taken Josie to hospital.

She heard Jane trying to shout Father awake. She wanted to stay on the phone, to remain anchored to her sister because the alternative was to drift away across a cold and silent and dark ocean. But she didn’t want to hear Father’s reaction. So she killed the call. The silence dropped upon her like heavy rain. But it didn’t last long.

There was a knock at the door.

Two officers, one female. She was short, pretty, young, which highlighted the rugged presence of her larger, older colleague, and together they looked like a snapshot of old and new police disposition. She would be college educated, versed in people skills, designed as a romantic ideal of the community-based officer, while he seemed to hark back to the bygone image of hard cases getting things done by foot chases and booting in doors.

And they played their roles. The male ignored her and cast his eyes beyond, reading the interior of the house. The female immediately introduced both – Constables Lowth and Adams – and said, ‘You’re Mrs Carter? You reported your daughter and husband missing from the house, is that right?’

‘Yes. They wouldn’t go out. They must have been taken away.’ The cordless was thrust back into her pocket, having failed again to get an answer from Nick’s mobile. She looked past the officers and was dismayed to see a single police car on the dark road. ‘Is it just you two? Have you got people out searching? My sister thinks we should check hospitals, just in case Josie got hurt.’