By the time she leaves, the sun is dyeing the night sky orange. She pulls the front door shut behind her and looks up at Nan’s little semi, darkness behind each window. The adjacent houses still sleep, families that haven’t long moved into the area tucked safely behind each of them. The neighbours’ front door is right next to her own; their path is decorated with glazed terracotta pots and in one a rainbow windmill smiles out at the morning. It belongs to the little girl who sleeps in the room above the front door. She’s five or six, and she always stops to say hello. Chloe couldn’t describe what she looked like – her eyes are always trained on the little girl’s hands, one always locked tight inside her mother’s.

A small wind blows and the plastic sails spin happily. Chloe tightens the belt on her coat and heads up the path towards the road.

In the lift up to the office Chloe studies her reflection in the mirror. The cold morning still clings to her cheeks and there’s little she can come up with to comfort herself that Nan is safe and warm somewhere. She plucks a stray leaf still tangled in strands of her dark hair; she must have collected it in the copse yesterday. She goes back over the scene, asking again how Nan could have just disappeared. It doesn’t feel right to come to work on a day like today. But what else is she going to do? Perhaps the right thing is to stay busy. She imagines that’s the advice they’d give in films. The lift announces the third floor, and she steps out towards the newsroom, leaving more foliage from under her footstep.

It’s still early and the beep of her security pass announces her arrival. The editor, Malc, stands by the news desk, hands in his pocket, swivelling on his heels between the news editor and the assistant editor as they decide on that day’s splash. He doesn’t look up as she makes her way towards the archive. No one ever does.

Chloe reaches her desk and checks her phone again for missed calls, just like she had when she got into the lift three minutes earlier. There’s nothing, no news. She places it on her desk beside her keyboard.

She’s not due in to work for another hour and a half, but she knows she needs to keep busy to distract herself from checking her mobile phone. She’s always preferred the archive without people. Her eyes fall to a plastic orange crate beside Alec’s desk – a job they’ve both been avoiding. The crate contains some of the oldest files that need scanning ready for the new electronic system. She turns the scanner on and watches as the bright white light beams back from beneath the flatbed.