Sara Saidani surveyed the chaos with growing irritation. She wasn’t a super-tidy person and had always lived with piles of this or that, but lately the mess had escalated to a point where even she could no longer stand it. She shared a nine-hundred-square-foot apartment in Copenhagen’s Christianshavn neighborhood with her two daughters and, on most days, her boyfriend, too, and keeping it in even moderately decent order was starting to feel like holding a tsunami at bay with nothing but a roll of black trash bags.

She spotted a brown, half-eaten apple in one corner and rolled her eyes in disgust. Oh, what rotten filth wouldn’t she find once she got going? With a weary sigh, she started cleaning.

A pair of floral-patterned cotton underwear landed in the hamper along with the yellow hoodie that Amina had whined for weeks to get and which was already stained and had been demoted to loungewear only. And here was one of Jeppe’s T-shirts—normally he took his laundry with him when he went. Sara brought the white cotton shirt up to her nose and inhaled the scent of boyfriend but then quickly wadded it up and tossed it in with the rest of the laundry. After all, there were limits to how sappy a woman could act when she was a mother of two. Single parent, police investigator, and in love with her coworker—not an optimal trio.

She carried the hamper to the laundry room, squatted down, and started stuffing a load into the machine. Their cramped living quarters combined with the challenge of integrating Jeppe into the family was beginning to wear on her. For as passionate as he was about her, he seemed equally disengaged when it came to her kids. Sara sometimes felt like she was so busy forcing them all into a family relationship that she no longer knew how she felt about it herself.

Jeppe would be here soon. Sara wasn’t on call herself, but after he had texted her this morning, she had turned on her police radio. The boy was fifteen years old, missing since yesterday afternoon. It could be serious but also quite harmless. Hopefully he would turn up again soon and in good shape.

The washing machine rumbled, and she watched it meditatively as it filled with water, while she picked at the Pippi Longstocking Band-Aid that covered a scrape on her knee. Little Meriem had applied it for her, concentrating, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth.

The bathroom door creaked, and Sara could sense Jeppe even before she turned around to face him.

“There you are,” she said, getting up. “Have you found him?”

“No. No witnesses, and no one knows where he is.”

“Oh, poor parents. How are they taking it?”

“As you might expect.”