Joanna looked up to the right, eyes flitting in miniscule movements as she searched her memory. ‘Connor, what day this week did I make moussaka?’

Connor’s chest was rising and falling with his breath. ‘Um, that was the day I came in late, after guitar lesson, wasn’t it? So, Wednesday.’

‘Yes, Wednesday.’ Joanna turned to Pip. ‘I don’t actually remember using it, but that’s always the one I use for cutting aubergine, because it’s the sharpest and widest. I would have noticed if it was gone, I’m sure.’

‘OK, OK,’ Pip said, buying herself some time to think. ‘So, the knife likely went missing in the last four days.’

‘What does that mean?’ Joanna said.

‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ Pip said, tactfully. ‘It might have no correlation to Jamie at all. Might turn up somewhere round the house you hadn’t thought to look. Right now, it’s just a piece of information about something out of the ordinary, and I want to know everything that’s out of the ordinary, no matter what it is. That’s all.’

Yeah, she should have kept it to herself, the panic in both of their eyes confirmed that. Pip glanced at the make of the knives, took a photo of the rack and empty slot on her phone, trying not to draw too much attention to what she was doing. Returning to her laptop, she googled the brand and an image came up from the website, of all the different colour-coded knives laid out in a row.

‘Yes, those are the ones,’ Joanna said behind her.

‘OK.’ Pip closed her laptop and slid it back in her bag. ‘I’ll get those calamity files to you, Connor. I’ll be looking through them until late, so if you find anything text me right away. And, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at school. Goodnight, Joanna. Sleep well.’

Sleep well? What a stupid thing to say, of course she wasn’t going to sleep well.

Pip backed out of the room with a strained, toothless smile, and hoped they couldn’t read anything on her face, any imprint of the thought she’d just had. The thought she’d had before she could stop herself, looking at the image of the six coloured knives arranged in a line, her eyes circling the yellow one. The thought that if you wanted to use one of those knives as a weapon, that’s the one you would choose. The missing one.

The missing knife:

Might be irrelevant, I’m desperately hoping it is, otherwise this case has already taken a sinister turn I don’t want to go down. But the timing does feel significant: that both Jamie and a knife from their house go missing in the same week. How do you just lose a great big knife like that (a 6-inch chef ’s knife, the website says) around the house? You don’t. It must have been taken out of the house at some point after Wednesday evening.

Strange behaviour:

Attempting to steal money from Mum’s company is definitely out of character for the Jamie I know. The Reynoldses say so too; he’s never stolen anything before. What was his plan – take the card to an ATM and draw out the maximum amount of cash (Google says this can be between £250 – £500)? And why was he so desperate for the money? Random thought: could this have anything to do with that women’s watch I found in Jamie’s bedside table? It doesn’t look new, but maybe he bought it second-hand? Or could that have been stolen, too?

And what did Jamie’s ‘life or death’ comment mean? I get chills thinking about it, looking back on it from the other side of his disappearance. Was he talking about himself or someone else? (NB: buying a second-hand women’s watch probably doesn’t fall under ‘life or death’.)

Not telling his family about losing his job doesn’t feel inherently suspicious to me. Of course he’d want to cover up the reason he was fired, but it also makes sense he wanted to hide the fact he was jobless again, given that so much of the tension between Jamie and his father has been about his non-committal job-hopping, about not having enough ambition or drive.

On the topic of strange behaviour – where has Arthur Reynolds been all of today? OK, I understand he doesn’t believe Jamie is really missing, that he’s likely run off after their big argument and will be back in a few days completely fine. Past experience supports this theory. But if your wife and younger son are so convinced something’s wrong, wouldn’t you start to entertain the possibility? It’s clear his wife is distraught, even if Arthur doesn’t believe anything is wrong, wouldn’t he stick around to support her? He still wants nothing to do with this investigation. Maybe he’ll change his mind soon, now we’ve passed the forty-eight-hour mark.

Calamity party:

What was Jamie doing there? My working theory is that the ‘someone’ he saw is likely a person in my year or the year below at school. Jamie spotted them at the memorial, and afterwards, he followed this person as they walked (presumably with a group of friends) to Highmoor and the calamity party at Stephen Thompson’s house. I suspect Jamie slipped inside (the sighting at 9:16 p.m.) and that he wanted to talk to this ‘someone’ – why else follow them? At 9:38 p.m. I believe Jamie was watching ‘someone’ as they stood near the fireplace. A photo at 9:29 p.m. shows nine identifiable people around the fireplace.

From Year 13: Elspeth Crossman, Katya Juckes, Struan Copeland, Joseph Powrie, Emma Thwaites, and Aisha Bailey.

From Year 12: Yasmin Miah, Richard Willett and Lily Horton.

The photo doesn’t overlap with the Jamie sighting, but it’s the closest I have. I’ll find them all at school tomorrow and see if they know anything.

Open leads:

More photos / videos from calamity party being sent in – go through them.

Hillary F. Weiseman –the only Hillary F. Weiseman I can find is the 84-year-old who died in Little Kilton in 2006. Obit says she left behind one daughter and two grandsons, but I can’t find any other Weisemans. Why was Jamie writing her name down within the last week and a half? What’s the connection?

Who was Jamie on the phone to at 10:32 p.m.? Long conversation – 30 mins+? Same person he’s been texting / talking to in recent weeks? Not Nat da Silva.

The identity of ‘someone’ and why Jamie followed them to calamity?

Stealing money – why? Life or death?

MONDAY

3 DAYS MISSING

Sixteen

She didn’t sit at the front any more. That’s where she used to sit, in this classroom, at this very time, when it was Elliot Ward standing at the front, talking them through the economic effects of World War II.

Now it was Mr Clark, the new history teacher who’d come in after Christmas to take Mr Ward’s place. He was young, maybe not even thirty yet, brown feathered hair and a trimmed beard that was mostly ginger. He was eager, and more than a little enthusiastic about his PowerPoint slide transitions. Sound effects too. It was a bit too early on a Monday morning for exploding hand grenades, though.

Not that Pip was really listening. She was sitting in the back corner. This was her place now, and Connor’s was beside her: that hadn’t changed. Except he’d been late in today, and now he was jiggling his leg as he sat there, also not paying attention.

Pip’s textbook was standing up on her desk, open on page 237, but she wasn’t actually taking notes. The textbook was a shield, hiding her from Mr Clark’s eyes. Her phone was propped up against the page, earphones plugged in and the cable tucked up the front of her jumper, the wire snaking down her sleeve so the earphone buds rested in her hand. Fully disguised. It must have looked to Mr Clark like Pip was resting her chin in her hand as she scribbled down dates and percentages but really, she was scrolling through calamity party files.