I’m holding myself back with all the strength I can muster. I knew he’d met her the once at some football game. That’s what Amber said, she saw him once. She never told me she kept meeting him.

It all makes sense now, Amber’s secrecy, her distancing herself from me. The endless smartass comments, treating me like the fool she thought I was for not knowing what was going on around me. I had put it down to her being a teenager, those re-aligning years, the usual errors parents make when they’re trying to understand a sudden change in their kid’s personality.

‘Do you have any idea where she could be now?’ Burke says in a tone a hell of a lot gentler than I’d use on him. This time Kenny looks up at Tom, he’s preparing to disappoint him.

‘Maybe she’s with Joyce.’

‘Joyce?’

‘Yes, the woman who said she was my mother?’

I’m ready to pounce but she puts her hand up to stop me.

‘Why do you think she might be with Joyce, Kenny?’

‘I’m not saying she is.’ Kenny creeps to the edge of the sofa, his face ashen, his legs shaking.

‘What are you saying, Kenny?’

‘Just… well…’

Jesus, I want to get a hurley stick from the back garden and beat the answers out of him. Tom is equally as impatient; moving forward to within an inch of Kenny, he says, ‘Amber is missing, answer the police.’

Tears are now flowing down the boy’s face. ‘I don’t know, it’s just something she said.’

‘Who? What did they say?’

‘Joyce… After my Mam was killed. I told her I didn’t want to live with her.’ He’s rushing now, words falling like rain from an overburdened cloud.

‘Go on.’

‘I told her I wanted to live with my dad, that’s when she said it.’ He looks up and speaks to myself and Tom. ‘She said she wondered how you’d like it if someone took your child away.’

The room darkens. Below my feet the ground feels like sponge. The mad woman has her. I know it. She’s taken her to get even. Oh my God, she’s with a murderer. Amber is in real danger. Rushing from Tom’s side, I pull a Lego bucket from the pile of kids’ toys in the corner and puke.

‘Sal, we’ll find her,’ Tom says, his voice crackling with fear.