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with those of the world. She might have done that… but not if she was dead. I couldn’t work out if I wanted her dead or not. It all got too much. If she wasn’t dead, she surely would have called to let me know she was all right. I wasn’t so bad a father as not deserve at least that. If she was dead, and I didn’t know about it, was that any better? I’d be searching for the rest of my life, but at least she’d be at peace, that was what was important. I’d rather not know. I’d rather keep searching, but maybe not too hard, in case I actually found her. In case I found her and she was dead after all.
    I crossed the road and thought about how it had gone, that day she had disappeared. Or I might have done, were it not for the fact that a light had come on inside the house.
    I tried to see in through the window of the ground-floor flat, as I swung the gate open, but there was a slatted blind concealing the front room. Maybe I should just ring Kara, I thought, tell her to come round, because her brother was home, presumably bored already of running away, and I was suddenly angry at being jerked about like this, money or not. I rang the doorbell. The light went out. Something smashed. I cupped a hand around my eyes and leaned against the door to try to see through the stained glass into the hallway. When the door swung inwards, almost causing me to trip over the threshold, I found myself in a deeply unusual situation.
    I have only ever been scared – really, truly, hey-there-go-my-nuts scared – maybe three times in my life. Two of those times were when I was around seven or eight years old, and I had suddenly discovered that the dark was a pretty unpleasant place to be, especially when you were certain that something with big teeth was living inside the lampshade. The third time was when I went with a married woman whose husband found out about me, and he kept me awake all night with a phone call in which he detailed very specifically what he was going to do with my head once he’d cut it free of my shoulders.
    And here was that old feeling again: my tongue and lips like a few curls of used sandpaper.
    I stood in the hallway, listening for the other guy. For Phythian.
    ‘Jason?’ I called out. ‘I’m here to help out a friend. Your sister, Kara Geenan, she’s worried about you. Thinks you’ve gone missing.’
    How crazy it can be, doing these private jobs. How fucking out there . It dawned on me that all my life was made up of standing in the dark, trying to make out the shape of whatever was up ahead. I wished I’d taken up Nev’s offer of a curry. I’d rather a chicken jalfrezi was now responsible for my runny guts.
    I reached for the light switch but there was no bulb in the socket. I had better luck once I reached the living room, where the light had been only recently doused. I spent less than a second in there, but long enough to know that the occupant wasn’t too keen on decoration but liked skin mags, Pot Noodles and Heineken beer. There was also a cot with a cheap paper mobile hanging over it. Kara had said nothing about her brother being a dad. A recent dad, at that. Further along the hallway, my boot crunched on to what had smashed earlier: a white plate. I bent down and picked up a few of the larger pieces: just pointlessly cheap china, of the kind you find in a Poundstretcher. He’d scarpered, it seemed.
    The kitchen smelled of nicotine and old bacon, the open back door swinging on its hinges, plastic streamers swishing around like some exotic dancer’s straw dress. I flicked the light on and looked around. If pigs ever evolved to the point where they started using kitchens, this is what they’d look like. Every pan was thick with half-moons of solidified lard. The washing-up bowl was rammed full with crockery. I moved to the door and looked out at the amorphous reaches of the garden, a scrubby mess filled with the skeletons of old bicycles, a washing machine, an upended wheelbarrow