It was 11.30. He’d had four hours’ sleep outside in the sunlounger. That was more than he usually got. He scratched the back of his head and saw blood under his fingernails from the mosquito bites. Inside, he put on some coffee and rinsed his face in the sink. He dried himself with the fine linen tea towel and could almost hear Anette’s protest break the silence. Tea towels were for china and glass, not unshaven human skin. And it was the police who should be looking for Lina, not her obsessed father. Anette had slapped him full in the face and screamed that it was his fault; he was the one who should have made sure she got on the bus; he was the one who had taken her daughter away from her. She had hit and clawed at him before he managed to grab her arms and hold her as hard as he could until her muscles relaxed and she crumpled under him. The day Lina disappeared was the last time they touched each other.

Anette looked for answers outside, turned to friends and psychologists and newspaper reporters. To Thomas, the occupational therapist who stood ready and waiting with open arms and a throbbing erection. A man who was willing both to listen and screw away the problem. Anette self-medicated with sleeping tablets and sedatives, which took the focus from her eyes and made her talk too much. She created a Facebook page dedicated to Lina’s disappearance, organized meetings and gave interviews that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. The most intimate details of their life together. Details about Lina that he hadn’t wanted anyone to know.

As for him, he spoke to nobody. He didn’t have time. He had to find Lina. Searching was the only thing that mattered. The trips along the Silver Road began that summer. He lifted the lid of every rubbish bin and dug his way through skips and marshes and disused mines with his bare hands. He sat at home with his computer, reading long threads on internet forums where total strangers discussed their theories about Lina. A long, sickening tangle of suggestions: she had run away, been murdered, kidnapped, dismembered, lost her way, drowned, run over, forced into prostitution, and a whole catalogue of other nightmare scenarios he could hardly bear to think about, but made himself read anyway. On an almost daily basis he rang the police and yelled at them to do their job. He didn’t eat or sleep. He would come home after long days and nights on the Silver Road with his clothes dirty and scratches on his face that he couldn’t explain. Anette stopped asking. Maybe he was relieved she had left him for Thomas, so that he could devote himself to the search. The search was all he had.