She empties the file and spreads the cuttings out on her desk, every so often aware of Alec passing by and glancing in her direction. Smaller cuttings offer tantalising tasters, words leap up from the melamine: missing girl, heartbroken parents, search, desperate, hope fades. But she knows the real story – the whole story – is folded away within the larger cuttings. She hasn’t been able to stop thinking of the Kyles, especially not last night when she had returned home alone, when she’d felt the silence in the walls of that empty house. Is that how it has felt to these parents since the day Angela went missing? She feels she must be the only person who has some idea of what they are going through, and that likewise, they would understand her, and in many ways that made her feel less lonely, just the thought that someone would understand.

She picks one of the articles at random, opens out the double-page spread on her desk.

LOCALS JOIN SEARCH FOR MISSING GIRL

She starts to read, but Alec limps past again so she quickly presses the article underneath the scanner. Her heart races as the pixels begin to appear on her computer screen.

There is a picture of Angie in this one, a grainy black and white reception class photo, a milk-tooth grin, hair in two bunches.

Missing: Angie, four, the caption reads.

The main picture is of locals searching through long grass alongside police, watched over by her parents, and underneath: Heartbroken: Parents Patrick and Maureen Kyle. She lingers on this picture of them, their fingers knitted tightly together in gripped hands, the two of them united in their grief for their precious missing child.

A reporter enters the archive and, thinking it’s Alec, she quickly labels and closes the file. Then she picks another:

MOTHER: ‘HOW CAN MY GIRL JUST DISAPPEAR?’

This time a colour piece from a feature writer who hasn’t worked at the paper for ten years. She had gone back to the family for a revisit:

MAUREEN Kyle sits opposite me on the sofa in their cosy sitting room. There is not a thing out of place and yet, it’s very clear that something is missing from this tableau. She appears poised, collected, but as her eyes rest on a photograph of her missing daughter, little Angela – or Angie, as her mum and dad call her – that calm exterior cracks, and the tears flow. ‘One minute she was here, playing in this living room, and the next she was gone. It doesn’t seem right. How could my daughter just disappear like that? How can any child disappear without trace? Somebody somewhere must know something.’ Her husband, Patrick, inches closer to her on the sofa and reaches for her hand . . .