Matthew Rider was getting more and more worried as time went on. He had been standing looking out of the window ever since he had got up. Where was Lucy? He had never woken up and found she wasn’t beside him. And she always rang him when she was going to be late home from work at the office. He couldn’t remember any point in the five years of their marriage when she had kept a secret from him, and she had certainly never gone missing before.
“Where are you, Lucy?” he said out loud.
Matthew sat down on a dining room chair and pulled it nearer the window. A few people walked past, but no one looked his way. He had heard a police siren earlier, but that had gone roaring up the lane. He was getting hungry; he hadn’t eaten much since six o’clock yesterday when she hadn’t got home. He would ha
