“Where’s Joanna?” The words hung in the air between them. Rosie saw her mother’s face tighten. “Rosie? Where’s Joanna?”

She heard her own voice saying, “She was there. It’s not my fault. I thought she’d gone home on her own.”

She felt her hand grabbed, and she and her mother were running back down the road the way she had come, along the street where they lived and up past the sweetshop where children hung around the door, past the man with the pockmarked face and the empty smile, and round the corner out of the shade and into the dazzle. Feet slamming and a stitch in her ribs, over the cracks without pausing.

All the while she could hear, above the banging of her heart and the asthmatic wheezing of her breath, her mother calling, “Joanna? Joanna? Where are you, Joanna?”

Deborah Vine pushed a tissue against her mouth as if to stop the words streaming out of her. Outside the back window, the police officer could see a slender, dark-haired girl standing in the small garden quite still, her hands by her side and a school bag still hanging off her shoulder. Deborah Vine looked at him. He was waiting for her answer.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “About four o’clock. On her way home from school, Audley Road Primary. I would have collected her myself except it’s hard to get there on time from work—and anyway she was with Rosie and there are no roads to cross and I thought it was safe. Other mothers leave their children to go home alone and they have to learn, don’t they, learn to look after themselves, and Rosie promised to keep an eye on her.”

She drew a long, unsteady breath.

He made a note in his book. He rechecked Joanna’s age. Five and three months. Where she was last seen. Outside the sweetshop. Deborah couldn’t remember the name. She could take them there.

The officer closed his notebook. “She’s probably at a friend’s house,” he said. “But have you got a photograph? A recent one.”

“She’s little for her age,” said Deborah. She could hardly get the words out. The offi cer had to lean forward to hear her. “A skinny little thing.

She’s a good girl. Shy as anything when you first meet her. She wouldn’t go off with a stranger.”

“A photo,” he said.

She went to look. The officer glanced again at the girl in the garden with her blank white face. He’d have to talk to her, or one of his colleagues perhaps. A woman would be better. But maybe Joanna would turn up before it was necessary, tumble in. She had probably wandered off with a friend and was playing with whatever five- year- old girls play with—dolls and crayons and tea sets and tiaras. He stared at the photograph Deborah Vine passed him, of a girl with dark hair like her sister’s and a thin face. One chipped tooth, a severe fringe, a smile that looked as if she had turned up her mouth when the photographer told her to say “cheese.”

“Have you got hold of your husband?”

Her face twisted.

“Richard—my . . . I mean, their father—doesn’t live with us.” Then as if she couldn’t stop herself, she added: “He left us for someone younger.”

“You should let him know.”

“Does that mean you think this is really serious?” She wanted him to say no, it didn’t really matter, but she knew it was serious. She was damp with fear. He could almost feel it rising off her.

“We’ll keep in touch. A female officer is on her way here.”

“What shall I do? There must be something I can do. I can’t just sit here waiting. Tell me what to do. Anything.”

“You could phone people,” he said. “Anywhere she might have gone.”

She clutched at his sleeve. “Tell me she’ll be all right,” she insisted. “Tell me you’ll get her back.”

The officer looked awkward. He couldn’t say that, and he couldn’t think of what else to say.