Anna wanted to sit on Josie’s bed but the officer told her she shouldn’t. They stood side-by-side and Anna allowed the other woman to flip the pages in the album. It immortalised Josie playing with toys, and riding her bike on the driveway, and donning school uniform, and so much more. Despite the emotional assault of recounting ‘events of the evening’, the heavy emptiness of the room faded from Anna’s heart as she watched Josie’s five years from baby to little lady pass in sixty seconds. The officer paused over the most recent picture of her. Ginger hair, long and wavy, in a photo from a month ago. In that, and others, she wore a colourful beaded necklace, a gift from her grandmother that she wore constantly, even asleep, even in the bath.

‘I’m going to take a thousand more when Josie comes home,’ Anna said, wiping away tears running down her cheeks. She slipped the photo out of its sleeve.

But the officer took it from her. ‘Do you mind if I take this? I’ll need one of your husband, too.’ It killed the moment, which brought it all crashing back upon Anna. ‘Is your neck okay?’

Anna realised she’d been scratching at her neck. She stopped. At that moment Adams appeared in the doorway and said, ‘Mrs Carter, Chief Inspector Miller would like a word, please.’

That was when she became aware of other voices in the house. More police, who she hadn’t heard arrive. And a Chief, which meant she’d been taken seriously.

Detective Chief Inspector Lucy Miller, Homicide and Major Enquiry, was a trim forty-something with a creased beige skirt suit as functional as her short blonde hair and negligible make-up, and she was in Josie’s playroom, standing amid the carpet of toys. She nodded a greeting and introduced herself and her colleague, Detective Sergeant Liam Bennet, an older man, very tall with an acne-scarred face, who was taking photos of the room on a tablet computer that seemed like a regular mobile in his big spade of a hand. Miller didn’t move but Bennet stepped up to shake her hand, which seemed to swallow hers. His movement was ungainly, as if he was unused to being so tall.

‘Have you been out searching?’ Anna asked, slotting away the cordless after another failure to find Nick. She no longer expected to reach him on his mobile, but each time the call went straight to voicemail was a stab in the heart.

Miller gave her a smile, soft, slight, enough just to offer a sense of comfort. ‘Ah, we’re going to do what we can to bring your daughter back to you. Josie, she’s called?’ Her voice was scratchy, as if she had a cold or a dry throat, and the accent mild, but certainly not Yorkshire.