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the Sky.
    For the next couple of hours I watched numbly from my car as the scene in the car park transformed. I felt useless, a voyeur.
    The ‘sergeant and six’ turned out to be a grilled van, from which seven men appeared, ready to search on foot. Another van brought a generator, lights, a shelter and maps and four Mountain Rescue men. Inspector Miller and WPC Banks worked to organise them. They’d both begun to function with the contained, intense kind of energy of somebody who has a bad secret that they’re not allowed to tell.
    Dawn crept in in fits and starts, the pall of total darkness reluctant to retreat. Daylight revealed that the parking area had been churned up by the constant comings and goings during the night. The only blessings were that the rain had ebbed to a persistent drizzle and the wind had died down somewhat, though spiteful, icy little gusts still blew through intermittently.
    Four mounted officers congregated at the entrance to the path. Their horses were huge and beautiful, with glossy coats and nostrils that snorted visible puffs into the damp, chilly air. Ben would have loved them. One of them startled as the thud-thud of the search helicopter grew louder overhead. It swooped low over the treetops, before disappearing again.
    Katrina arrived soon afterwards. John emerged from his car to greet her and folded his arms around her in a public display of affection the likes of which had never occurred once in our entire relationship. He buried his face into her hair. I lowered my gaze.
    She knocked on my car window, startling me. I wound it down.
    ‘No news yet?’ she said.
    I shook my head.
    ‘I’ve brought these for you, in case you need something.’ She handed me a thermos and a paper bag.
    ‘It’s just tea, and some pastries. I didn’t know what you like, so I picked for you…⁠’ Her voice trailed away. She was neatly dressed, and she stood there like a prefect at school, well turned out and eager to please. No make-up. That was the first time I’d seen her without it. I didn’t know what to say.
    ‘Thanks,’ I managed.
    ‘If there’s anything I can do.’
    ‘OK. Thanks.’
    ‘John’s asked me to go back home, in case he turns up there.’
    ‘OK. Good idea.’
    It was awkward and strange. There’s no protocol for meeting your ex-husband’s new wife at the site where your son’s gone missing.
    ‘Well, I’d best get back there,’ she said, and she turned away, returned to John.
    After she’d gone, I looked in the bag of pastries. Two croissants. I tried to nibble one, but it tasted like dust. I managed some sips of tea. It wasn’t sugared, the way I like it, but the heat was welcome.
     
    It was just after Katrina left that Inspector Miller’s radio sprang into life.
    They’d found something. It was hard to hear the detail. The radio crackled and spat, words emerging occasionally from the interference. ‘What is it?’ I mouthed at the inspector as he held up a finger to shush me. He beckoned to WPC Banks to join him and they turned away, conferred. John noticed the action and appeared beside me. I felt electrified by hope and dread. Once again the drone of the helicopter travelled over us, making it even more difficult to hear. The Inspector turned to us:
    ‘Can you confirm once again what Ben is wearing, please?’
    ‘Red anorak, white T-shirt with a picture of a guitar on it, blue jeans, ripped at the knee, blue trainers that flash.’
    He repeated it all into his radio. The voice crackled back at him, asking what size and brand of trainer.
    ‘Geox,’ I said. ‘Size thirty.’
    The inspector turned away again. It took all my self-control not to grab him, to shake out of him what was going on. John was rigid beside me, arms folded tightly across his chest.
    It was the awkward twitch of Inspector Miller’s mouth that gave it away when he turned back to us. Whatever they’d found, it wasn’t making him happy.
    ‘Right.’ He took a deep breath, drawing