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wearing an anorak and a cotton top.’
    Ben hated to wear jumpers. I’d got him into one that afternoon before we left for the woods, but he’d wriggled out of it once we were in the car.
    ‘I’m hot, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘So hot.’
    The jumper, red, knitted, lay on the back seat of my car and I leaned back and pulled it onto my lap, held it tight, smelled him in its fabric.
    Nicky was still talking, reassuring, as she usually did, even when her own anxiety was building.
    ‘It’s OK. It won’t take them long to find him. He can’t have gone far. Children are very resilient.’
    ‘They won’t let me search for him. They’re making me stay in the car park.’
    ‘That makes sense. You could injure yourself in the dark.’
    ‘It’s nearly his bedtime.’
    She exhaled. I could imagine the creases of worry on her face, and the way she’d be gnawing at her little-finger nail. I knew what Nicky’s anxiety looked like. It had been our constant companion as children. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she said, but we both knew they were only words and that she didn’t know that for sure.
     
    When John arrived WPC Banks spoke to him first. They stood in the beam of John’s headlights. The rain was relentless still, heavy and driving. Above them a huge beech tree provided some shelter. It had hung on to enough of its leaves that its underside, illuminated by the lights from the car, looked like a golden corona.
    John was intently focused on what WPC Banks was saying. He exuded a jumpy, fearful energy. His hair, usually the colour of wet sand, was plastered blackly around the contours of his face, which were pallid, as if they’d been sculpted from stone.
    ‘I’ve spoken to my inspector,’ WPC Banks was telling him. ‘He’s on his way.’
    John nodded. He glanced at me, but moved his eyes quickly away. The tendons in his neck were taut.
    ‘That’s good news,’ she said. ‘It means they’re taking it seriously.’
    Why wouldn’t they? I wondered. Why wouldn’t they take a missing child seriously? I stepped towards John. I wanted to touch him, just his hand. Actually, I wanted him to hold me. Instead, I got a look of disbelief.
    ‘You let him run ahead?’ he said and his voice was stretched thin with tension. ‘What were you thinking?’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    There was no point in trying to give him an explanation. It was done. I would regret it for ever.
    WPC Banks said, ‘I think for now it would be best if all of our focus is on the search for Ben. It won’t do him any good if you cast blame.’
    She was right. John understood that. He was blinking back tears. He looked distraught and incredulous. I watched him cycle through everything I’d been feeling since Ben had gone. He had question after question, each of which WPC Banks answered patiently until he was satisfied that he knew everything there was to know, and that everything possible was being done.
    As I stood beside him, and let WPC Banks reassure him, I realised that it had been more than ten months since I’d seen him smile, and I wondered if I ever would again.

JIM
    Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr Francesca Manelli.  
    Transcript recorded by Dr Francesca Manelli.  
    DI James Clemo and Dr Francesca Manelli in attendance.  
    Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behaviour, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.
    This transcript is from the first full psychotherapy session that DI Clemo attended. Previous to this we had only a short preliminary meeting where I took a history from DI Clemo and we discussed the report that I had asked him to write.
 
    Predictably, given his resistant attitude to therapy, the report that DI Clemo submitted at this stage was lacking in comment on areas of his personal and emotional experience at the time of the Benedict Finch case. The transcripts fill in the gaps somewhat. My priority in this first session was to begin to