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in?’
    â€˜Mum is,’ the girl said, and then, in a burst of confidence: ‘She won’t buy anything. She never buys anything at the door.’
    â€˜That’s all right, cos I’m not selling. Can I have a word with her? It’s important.’
    The girl twisted her head over her shoulder without removing her eyes from Swilley’s face and yelled through the half-open front door, ‘ Mu-u-um ! There’s a lady wants you.’
    Oh, ever so much a lady, Swilley thought.
    â€˜Are you a social worker?’ the girl asked abruptly. ‘She’s not my real mum, she’s my stepmum. I like your colour lipstick. What’s it called? Do you like vodka?’
    A woman appeared behind her, saving Swilley from answering. She was middle aged and ordinary, dressed in slacks, a cotton jumper and an unattractive big, thick, chunky cardigan. She had her glasses in one hand and a biro in the other, and a look between wariness and embryo annoyance on a face that held the remains of prettiness behind the soft plumpness of middle-aged marriage. ‘Yes?’ she said.
    â€˜Mrs Wiseman? I wonder if I could come in and have a word with you,’ Swilley said, and showed her warrant card. The woman looked immediately put out and flustered, but the child’s eyes opened so wide Swilley was afraid she’d see her brain.
    â€˜You’re the cops,’ she breathed. ‘Are you going to arrest Mum?’
    â€˜Bethany!’ the woman rebuked automatically, but her worried eyes were searching Swilley’s face. ‘Is it Ian? Is it an accident?’
    â€˜No, nothing like that. It may be nothing at all. Can I come in?’ Swilley said. The man two doors down had ceased wiping his car’s roof and was staring with his mouth ajar and the hose soaking his feet, ha ha.
    â€˜Oh, yes. Yes, come on through.’
    Bethany slipped in before Mrs Wiseman shut the door firmly behind Swilley. ‘Come in the lounge,’ she said. Swilley followed her, and as she turned with a question in her face, made a quick sideways gesture of the eyes towards the child, which fortunately the woman was compos mentis enough to catch and interpret. ‘Bethany, go out in the back garden and play,’ she said, sharply enough to be obeyed.
    â€˜Play?’ the girl complained. ‘What am I, a kid? I don’t play .’
    â€˜And shut the back door after you. Don’t let all the heat out.’
    The girl extracted herself by unwilling inches, leaving Swilley alone with her mother in a knocked-through lounge decorated and furnished in exactly the sort of middle-income, suburban taste Swilley would have expected.
    â€˜Would you like to sit down?’ Mrs Wiseman said automatically.
    Swilley saw she had been doing some sort of paperwork on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and took an armchair.
    Mrs Wiseman sat in the chair opposite, looked enquiringly at Swilley, and then suddenly something seemed to come over her. She swayed, gripped the arm of the chair, and said almost in a whisper, ‘Oh my God, it’s Melanie, isn’t it? Something’s happened to Melanie!’
    She stared at Swilley, white with some awful foreknowledge, and Swilley thought perhaps it was there, latent, in every mother’s mind, an instinct born at the moment of conception: the fear that one day some stranger would come and tell you your child had been taken from you. She felt horribly impressed, and a little queasy.
    â€˜It’s probably nothing to worry about,’ Swilley said, though Mrs Wiseman’s certainty had communicated itself to her, now. ‘It’s just that Melanie’s not at home, and her boyfriend doesn’t know where she is. Have you heard from her lately?’
    â€˜I spoke to her – Friday,’ Mrs Wiseman said. ‘She rang me from work. She rings me two or three times a week, just for a chat.’
    â€˜You’re close, then?’ said