He’s right, she knows that. She must stay here. Poppy will need to know her mother’s at home, not where she’d rather be, beating on doors in the police station, begging for information. She watches Eric hurry after Igor as he is led away by the policemen, stumbling in his loose slippers. She might have known. It’s what people always say, that the criminal is someone close to you, someone who has been there from the start, inside your home or nearby. She attempts to enter the bungalow, but the Scottish policewoman steps in front of her, shuts the door, and stands with her back to it. “I regret you are not permitted to enter.”

“What’s he done with my daughter?”

“A statement will be released later. I’m sorry not to be able to tell you more at the present time.” Her face is sympathetic but she doesn’t move, not even an inch. Eve steps back, panting. She must use her wits. Grace will help, she’ll know what to do. Eve hurries down the path, passing the smaller policewoman stationed at the gate. Back in the kitchen, her handbag is lying on the table, the contents spilling out: her coin purse, hairbrush, car keys. Three happy children smile up from the photograph in her wallet. She stares at all the objects on the table as if unearthed from the rubble of a dig, relics of a vanished life.

Igor’s words return to her in the silence: “. . . so that’s why I couldn’t find him under the hood”—his idea of a joke on a warm day back in the spring, when life was full and she was happy. She grabs the keys and runs to the cars, releases the hoods in turn, heaves them up. Only the engine, water tank, and greasy wires, dark tubes that twist like guts. She slams both hoods shut. On the way back to the house she bends to vomit in the flower bed. She gropes her way upstairs.

It might not have been Igor, it might be worse. Sorrel might have gone to the road to look for her, forgetting that her mother was in bed. Her fluttering skirt would have shone in the gloom like a flag. Who knows what monster might have slowed as he passed, what truck she might be in, what cellar, what boat? An adult can last thirty days without food—she googles this with trembling fingers—much less without water. She can’t find any information about a child. Fear settles closely over her, a great bird with hooded wings and talons that tear. She forces herself to shower, then puts on her clothes as though she were dressing someone else, someone old with stiff limbs that refuse to bend. When the phone rings her heart lurches. She leans against the window to take the call, out of breath as if she has been hurrying.

“Difficult news, unexpected.” Eric pauses.

“What d’you mean, unexpected?” she gasps out. “What’s he done?”