‘Don’t say that unless you mean it,’ Grace laughed. ‘I might take you up on it.’

‘I do mean it, Grace.’ He held her gaze.

Grace felt compelled to break the protracted silence that followed. ‘I had a fall-out with Annabel,’ she confided, finding herself glad to talk to someone. ‘And she left while she was angry with me. We don’t usually fight, not seriously …’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ben reassured her. ‘My sisters argue all the time – always have. There’s invariably some sort of upset going on in my family. Of course, I’ve been on the outside for a long time now, but from what I can gather it still goes on. Everyone is so stubborn – they insist on blaming each other for their problems, so one drama gets replaced by another.’

‘I gather you haven’t seen your mum yet?’ Grace asked gently.

Ben grimaced. ‘Unless she meets me halfway, nothing will ever change.’

‘Have you tried to talk to her, or does she just know that you’re here?’

‘Claire’s been acting as a go-between so far,’ he admitted.

‘Perhaps you should cut Claire out and try speaking to her yourself,’ Grace suggested as she got up from the sofa.

‘You don’t know my mother.’

‘Actually, I do a little bit – and she’s pretty formidable. But what choice does she have if you confront her – she has to listen, surely. And there must be a part of her that is longing to see you.’

‘Perhaps …’ Ben didn’t look convinced, but he sat there in silence for a while, thinking. ‘Maybe I’m still not sure whether I want to see her …’

Grace waited for him to continue, but he added nothing further. She collected some yoghurt from the fridge, and offered Millie a few spoonfuls, before she said, ‘Ben … can I ask you a favour?’

‘Of course.’

‘I feel a bit of a wimp saying this, but catching mice is not my forte. Can you set a trap for me upstairs, and then check it tomorrow? One of those humane ones …’

Ben smiled at her. ‘I think I can manage that – although do you have the trap already?’

She shook her head.

‘Then I don’t know where you’ll find one round here. Not many care about seeing the mice live … But I’ll tell you what, I’ll try to make something if you like.’ He contemplated the idea for a moment. ‘I’ll need a plastic box or bowl, at least five centimetres high, then something like a nail file or a cocktail stick …’

An hour later, the homemade trap was ready to go. Grace had run about finding materials, then looked on in admiration as Ben had constructed it. He lifted it carefully and they headed upstairs to her bedroom. Grace set Millie on the bed.

‘I think it’s somewhere in here,’ she said, opening the door of the built-in wardrobe.

Ben put the trap down and knelt beside it. ‘I’ll just have a peek and see if I can spot where the little nuisance has been,’ he told her. He began checking the floor, and Grace watched him while she and Millie sat on the bed. He lifted up a piece of carpet. Then he paused.

‘Er … you might want to come and look at this …’

‘If it’s a dead mouse then I’d really rather not,’ she told him, staying put.

‘Well, there’s no mouse, but he’s left his mark,’ Ben said, and he lifted up a bundle of chewed bank notes.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Grace asked, beginning to understand what it was that she was looking at.

‘There’s a loose floorboard under here, with a space beneath it.’

‘Oh my god, that’s got to be the money Adam took out of the bank, the day before he disappeared. He told me he was going to get some cash to keep at the cottage, but he never told me where he was planning on putting it. And I could never find it … It was one of the reasons the police thought he’d run away …’

Ben sat back with his arms wrapped around his knees, studying her carefully.

‘But you don’t think he did run away now, do you, Grace?’

After Ben had gone, Grace didn’t even bother contacting the police, knowing Ken Barton was away. Instead she called Niall again.

‘It’s Grace Lockwood,’ she said in a rush as he answered. ‘I’ve found the thousand pounds that Adam took out of the bank. It was hidden under a floorboard – I came across it this afternoon while I was looking for a mouse. He must have put it there for safekeeping, and he just didn’t get a chance to tell me.’ She hesitated, then ploughed on. ‘It seems highly unlikely that Adam would suddenly decide to leave without any money on him … there’s got to be more to it. So how do I get the police interested?’

She waited for his answer, her heart thumping hard.

‘Look, you really need to have a word with someone at the station. I’m not back there until Monday, but if you haven’t got anywhere by then, come down while I’m on duty, and I’ll make sure you get some attention.’

Grace knew he was trying to help, but the lack of urgency in Niall’s tone was dispiriting. For the next few days it looked like all she could do was sit on her hands.

Niall sensed her disappointment. ‘I know the waiting’s hard, but although you’ve made some discoveries, I’m not sure there’s much that’ll give us any new leads.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Look, I might be in Ockton later today. I’ll see if I can do a bit of digging about Jonny Templeton.’

‘Thank you. His sister is called Josephine, if that helps – I don’t know her married name, but I think she still lives in Ockton.’

‘All right then,’ Niall said. ‘I’ll be in touch if I find anything.’

Grace hung up and went over to Millie, picking her up. ‘So what shall we do now?’ she asked her daughter. In reply, Millie screeched and pushed hard against her, struggling until Grace put her down. Grace sat and watched as Millie crawled over to a pile of books, picked them up one by one and riffled briefly through the pages before flinging them aside. Her daughter seemed increasingly unsettled of late. Grace wished Millie could tell her what she had seen on the day Adam had disappeared. That little mind might hold all the answers, if only Grace could access it.

She leaned deeper into the chair cushions, thinking. Adam couldn’t have met with an accident, or Millie would have been found with him. So either he’d run away and chosen to leave his baby behind, or he had been an unwitting victim of some sort. Everyone seemed to think that the first option was more likely, but what if something sinister had happened? In that case, Millie had been left on the doorstep by someone else. Which meant they had known where Grace and Adam lived. And they were probably aware that Grace was back here now.

Her thoughts flashed back to the word LEAVE, its spectral appearance on her car windscreen. Her throat constricted and her lungs began to heave, struggling to draw in oxygen. She looked at her car keys on the table, then towards Millie. Why wasn’t she going? She could make the decision right now; and it would all be over.

It will never be over while you have so many questions, she reminded herself. She just had to keep listening to the calm, rational part of herself and ignore the shrieking voice in her head issuing a stream of dire warnings. After all, she had been living here for a month, and nothing much had actually happened. Only that word written on her car windscreen, which might have been a twisted prank. The rest of it could be put down to chance, or paranoia.

Meanwhile, she was getting closer to uncovering some answers, she knew it. She could at least stay until Monday, and go to the station. In the meantime she would pack up the rest of the cottage; organise it so she was ready to leave whenever she wanted to.