it and what they were not. I had already been through the second phone, twice, in the night, in the utility room, on the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth.
Five weeks.
I had a folder on my work email from the eleventh of September called household.
And I had told nobody. Not Fen, who sits four feet from me. Not my sister. Not the police, who I speak to for forty hours a week.
Because I wanted it complete. Because I have spent seven years listening to people ring in with half a thing and get told there is nothing that can be done with half a thing.
So on the seventh of October I got up, and made a packed lunch, and drove my husband to an airport, knowing — not suspecting, knowing — and I had already decided in the kitchen that I was going to follow him.
And my daughter
