‘Maybe we are the idiots,’ Lucas said quietly. ‘He’s taken us for a complete ride, that’s for sure.’ For a moment he sounded almost impressed. ‘Also,’ he continued, sinking back into glumness, ‘I can’t help being marginally reassured that he is playing silly buggers from behind some screen in the UK, as opposed to snapping selfies from flat-topped pyramids or vertiginous waterfalls.’

‘He’s crap with heights anyway,’ Lily muttered.

‘No, he isn’t,’ Esther interjected, ‘that’s me.’

‘He is, Mum. Quite crap, anyway. Remember the funfair when they stopped the ride?’

There was a silence as all three of them travelled back to Dylan, aged ten, being lifted down, hysterical to the point of vomiting, from the first open carriage of a giant wheel that had frozen because of some technical hitch. A day of planned family fun that had turned sour. ‘So come on, let’s make a concerted effort to find him,’ Esther urged, noting again how defeated Lucas seemed. ‘Lily, you know what social media sites he might be checking. Post a load of messages saying we know he’s around and want him to get in touch and come home. He’ll take it better from you.’

‘Mum, he’s not been on social media, and he must have a new phone… but of course I’ll try,’ she mumbled.

‘And, Lucas, couldn’t you Tweet or something?’

‘No, I could not.’ Lucas shook his head mournfully. ‘It’s not something I do any more. And anyway, frankly, the chances of such an approach doing anything to help are virtually non-existent. I could try and have a word with Jake though,’ he went on, ignoring Esther’s exclamations of encouragement and adding, his new grim face set hard, ‘despite all the evidence strongly suggesting that Dylan has a very powerful desire not to be found.’

‘Which doesn’t mean he isn’t badly in need of being persuaded otherwise,’ Esther cried, anger flaring, both at her own helplessness and their collective ineptitude. ‘I mean, there is hiding, and there is being lost – in yourself. Right? All I keep thinking,’ she confessed bitterly, ‘is why the hell any of us didn’t talk to Dylan properly instead of going on and on about those bloody exams. Like exams really count for anything…’ She could feel Lucas glowering, and had to clamp her teeth round the end of a biro to stop herself diverting the conversation further down a path she might regret, at least in front of Lily.

‘He’ll be back for Christmas, Mum, I bet you,’ Lily assured her sweetly, her own clear eyes misting suddenly – a reminder, as if Esther needed it, that her elder child was a past master at putting on a front. ‘He’ll crack then for sure… I mean, Dyl may be a selfish douche, but he bloody loves Christmas.’