‘Get a grip Dad. Listen to yourself. Mister Snigiss wasn’t real.’

‘You can’t be sure.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘You could find out.’

She rolled her eyes. She knew what was coming next.

‘You’re in the police!’ he said. ‘You can find these things out. You can find out the truth about Mister Snigiss. If we find Mister Snigiss, we can find out what happened to Jennifer.’

Bailey resisted the urge to lean across the table and try and shake some sense into him. Instead she took a deep breath and attempted to rein in her emotions.

‘I already looked into Jennifer’s case. I told you before. I’ve told you a thousand times before.’

‘But you haven’t looked into it properly, have you? Not in any detail.’

Not long after joining the police, Bailey had indeed examined the old case files pertaining to Jennifer’s disappearance and she’d even checked the Police National Database for evidence of Mister Snigiss, but, much as she’d expected, there had been no evidence of anyone with that name or alias. And she’d told her father as much, but he still wouldn’t give up, and they still always ended up having this argument, like clockwork, especially on Christmas Day even though it was her birthday and supposedly a day of joy and celebration as her mother always pointed out.

‘Well, I’ve got a new theory about Mister Snigiss,’ he whispered excitedly. ‘About who he is.’

‘Not another one,’ she said, rolling her eyes.

‘Just listen to me, Bailey! We know he must be at least fifty years old by now. But what if his name wasn’t really Mister Snigiss? What if—’

Bailey slammed her hand down on the table. Her father recoiled slightly.

‘That’s enough, Dad! Can’t you get it through your head? Jennifer is gone! She’s dead! She’s been dead for over twenty years!’

At the mention of the word ‘dead’, her father lapsed into a stony silence. Her mother, who’d just re-entered the living room holding a Christmas pudding, stopped and looked at Bailey in shock. Even she knew better than to say the ‘d’ word in the house.

‘Don’t you ever say that Jennifer is dead,’ said her father in a low, injured tone.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Bailey, thinking how yet again, despite whatever she might have hoped for, this birthday and Christmas had gone south in much the same way as all the previous ones had.

‘Don’t you want any Christmas pudding?’ said her mother.

‘Nah, I’m stuffed.’

Bailey stood up, left the table and walked upstairs, laden with the customary mixture of frustration and sadness.

Why couldn’t her father just accept the brutal truth? Bailey had. And her way to deal with it had been to join the police. If justice wasn’t going to materialise for Jennifer, then at least Bailey could try and do something about all the other bad things happening in the world.

Standing by the window on the landing, she gazed out through the net curtains at the dull expanse of suburbia under the grey washed-out sky.