The morning Rav left, his taxi arrived just before five. He kissed Chloe’s forehead and then slipped away, so when Chloe woke, hours later, from a blissfully deep, uninterrupted sleep, he was already in the air. The next ten days lay out in front of her, a sea of possibilities. She could do anything she wanted. She lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling, trying on option after option in her mind. She could cook the various vegetarian dishes that Rav thought were boring. Rewatch old episodes of Friends. Tumble-dry clothes that could easily be put on the washing line, just to feel them all warm and static from the machine. But first of all, she felt an old desire swelling in her stomach. Her fingers itched. But there was no one here to judge her. So she put on her robe, opened up her laptop and typed ‘Zadie Lister’ into Google.

She tried to leave it at least two weeks between sessions, telling herself that you couldn’t really be addicted to something you only did once a fortnight. There had been a time when it was a daily activity, back when Zadie had first disappeared. She used to cycle to the library or pay an internet café for half an hour of uninterrupted browsing. Of course, the internet had been different, then. Emptier. It would have been easier to find results there, if any had existed. Privacy settings on social media had been more lax, too. It had been far simpler to trawl through Zadie’s friends’ photo albums, searching for a glimpse of her in the background at balls, birthday bashes and barbecues.

A year after Zadie disappeared, Rav had asked her to stop looking. ‘This isn’t healthy. She knows that you’re looking for her,’ he had reasoned. ‘If she wants to find you, she knows where to look. But if she doesn’t want to be found, then you have to allow her that.’

Chloe had agreed, at least on the face of it, and had confined her searches to when she was alone. Making it into a secret habit had made it more exciting. As her phones had become smarter, she’d been able to search whenever she wanted to, clearing her history afterwards as if she had been looking at hard-core porn. Eventually, she had started limiting herself, treating these searches like a binge when she was on a diet. A treat. Something to be permitted, but not encouraged.

She’d never found anything. Not in all the years she had been searching. No engagement announcement. No wedding. No children. No mention of Zadie on a corporate website, no personal page selling art. No books, no articles, no Facebook, no Instagram, no Twitter. Nothing.