While we were looking for Leonard, pushing open the downstairs-loo doors and calling up through attic hatches, I couldn’t help thinking that, despite Norman’s obvious agitation, it was a bit early to start worrying seriously.

“You know, Norman, it’s not like...well, I mean, we don’t even know if Leonard has gone missing, as such. Maybe he just got up early and went for a walk to, you know, check out the neighborhood or something. He’ll probably be back in a minute.”

But the thing was, if I’d learned anything about Leonard over the past week, it was that he loved a good sleep in now he didn’t have to be up at the crack of dawn for his cleaning job. He was usually the last to wake up, although, come to think of it, he was always the first waiting by the car ready to go. It was probably all that army training. But anyhow, for him to be up before 7:00 a.m. now seemed fairly uncharacteristic, as far as I could tell.

After a thorough search of the house revealed nothing and it became very clear I wasn’t going to get a cup of tea, we reconvened in the Caramel Suite. For want of a better plan, I thought it would be a good idea to check my phone, just in case Leonard had called or left a message as to his whereabouts while we’d been on our search.

I’d plugged in my mobile the previous night, which I had to do at every opportunity, since it only held its charge for a day, and quite a lot less on the off chance I made or received any calls. When I picked it up, it was a couple of seconds before I realized something wasn’t quite right.

“Hey, Norman, look at this.”

The phone I had in my hand was definitely not my out-of-date, banged-up Samsung. It was bigger, thinner and much sleeker. A very un-banged-up iPhone. Leonard’s iPhone.

Then I remembered the last time I’d seen him with it was just before we’d gone to bed the night before. He’d taken it out of his jacket pocket and glanced at it as if he might be going to make a call, thought twice and then placed it down on the table next to mine. I looked at the mobile phone I was holding and it wasn’t hard to imagine that, in the dim light of a predawn getaway, to an old man with dicky eyes one might look very much like another.

“I think this means that wherever Leonard is, we can safely assume that he has my phone. What do you think?”

“I reckon you’re right, Mum. Here, pass it over.”

Delighted to have some kind of a clue, Norman swung into action and dialed my number off by heart from Leonard’s phone. It rang out, which didn’t surprise me one bit, although I decided it probably wasn’t the time or place to admit I had a habit of leaving my phone on silent mode. Just in case anyone wanted to speak to me. Deflated, Norman passed the iPhone back and we sat on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes, just looking at it.