“No, not yet. I meant when that’s sorted out.” A faint crunching noise grabs my attention. Footsteps on gravel, from the front of the house I think, though I’m slightly disoriented by the background noises coming through the phone. Someone is speaking close by to Jonathan—probably Rod. “I’m meeting the lawyer this afternoon.” There’s a sharp bang from the front of the house; I move to peer down the corridor to the front door. Something is lying on the welcome mat. Post, presumably. It must have been the postman.

“Good luck.” Jonathan yawns down the phone.

“You sound dead on your feet.” I’m closer to the front door now, and I can see it’s not post. It’s a newspaper. Presumably a freebie circular, since there would be no reason to pay for papers to be delivered here regularly.

“Yeah. But this thing is moving so fast.” I hear a louder snatch of a male voice. “Look, I have to go. I’ll call you when I can.”

“Okay. Stay safe.”

“You too.” It’s our habitual sign-off. Not I love you, or I miss you. We do say those, too, like all couples, but Stay safe is just for us. We initially became romantically involved when covering the Seattle WTO conference in 1999; it was my first experience of rioting, of the speed at which violence can rip through a crowd. I remember Jonathan’s hand on my arm when I had to be separated from him, the intensity in his eyes as he said those words, the dryness in my mouth as I nodded back. Stay safe. Back then it meant everything. It doesn’t quite seem enough, now.

There’s something odd about the paper in my hand. I look at it more closely and realize that not only is it not neatly folded in half at the front page, as you’d expect from a new issue, but instead it has been roughly folded to quarter size at a different page. And it’s old; the paper has yellowed. I look for the date: 20 October 1983.

October 1983. A month after my father disappeared.