The 14.02 train was a completely different experience to the rush-hour trains I usually caught. There were dozens of free seats to choose from, and I could even put my bag on the seat next to me.

Directly in front of where I chose to sit was a woman on her own reading a detective novel, two rows down there was a business man with a laptop, and across from him, an older man in a blue anorak with his hands in his lap.

I spread my newspaper across the pull-down table, scalded my mouth on my tea and urged the train to move like the wind.

As I watched the cityscape morph into green trees, I thought more about Rosie’s lost hour. Perhaps she had been collecting conkers on the recreational ground, perhaps she’d been hiding in her den at the bottom of the garden, perhaps she had simply wanted some time to herself away from Harriet and Noah. And who could blame her?

There had to be an innocent explanation, and then again there was that familiar gnawing worry that she was slipping from me. Not physically, like in the train station, but emotionally. I tried to put the never-ending analysis aside for a moment to console myself that Rosie’s age – double figures, ten years old – was a hormonal time. She was in the emerging adolescence phase, where a girl’s body hints at puberty and her moods darken, where she craves independence and starts the fight for separation, while still too immature to be able to cope alone. The tussle was there inside her already; but the power fights seemed frighteningly premature. I dreaded it as a precursor for what was to come. There were signs of trouble ahead that I could ignore at my own peril.

Twenty minutes or so away from my stop, I heard an unintelligible announcement on the tannoy and noticed that we had been at the same station platform for longer than we should have been. I asked the lady in front of me what the guard had announced.

‘Might be stuck here for a while.’

‘How frustrating,’ I said, feeling the delay as a personal attack.

School pick-up time was an hour away; I felt impatient and twitchy, eager to surprise Rosie at the school gates.

More than that, the stationary train seemed to have portent, a message in its refusal to carry me where I wanted to go.

The newspaper lost its appeal and I turned on my phone to call Harriet to ask her to be home, on standby, just in case.

‘No problem, Gemma,’ she replied, efficient and loyal as ever. ‘Anyway, Rosie promised to show me a special acrobatics routine she’d been practising today and I’d hate to miss that!’ she laughed.

I knew Harriet meant well, that she was showing me how dedicated she was to my children, proving to me that she was a nanny of excellence, which she was. But envy spread through me. She was referring to fun times with my daughter that I was not part of. And again, if this train didn’t move soon, she would be the first one to hug my daughter after school. I felt wretched for all the hours Harriet had spent with her that I had missed. And even worse, I knew that I hadn’t been psychologically capable of spending all those hours with Rosie performing those repetitive, thankless, relentless tasks of motherhood.

‘One more thing, Harriet. Rosie definitely said she was going to Beth’s yesterday afternoon, didn’t she? And not some other friend?’

‘Yes, she definitely said Beth. Why?’

‘No reason.’ Another phone call came through. ‘Sorry, Harriet, I have to get this, it could be work,’ I said.

‘Hello?"

Above my head, yellow letters moved across the information board with no information.

‘Hello, is this Mrs Bradley?’

‘Yes, speaking?’

‘Hello, this is DC Miles from Child Protection at Greyswood Police. Are you in a convenient place to speak?’

‘Child protection?’

I noticed the old man in the anorak look up from his phone.

‘Sorry, could you hold on for a second?’ I asked.

I stood up, leaving my seat to move to the corridor where I wouldn’t be overheard.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, sorry to alarm you, Mrs Bradley, but we’ve had a call from one of your neighbours that we’re duty bound to follow up on and I’m afraid we’re going to need to speak to your daughter at school today.’

My mind blanked.

‘Hello, Mrs Bradley?’

I managed to make words come from my throat. ‘Sorry, we must have gone through a tunnel.’ I stared out at the platform, watching a man bite into a large Cornish pasty. ‘Could you repeat what you said?’

DC Miles repeated what she had said. Her words spun around my head and I tried to order them into a sentence that made sense.

‘Are you telling me we have to go through all this again?’

‘I understand that when the response officers visited your home on October sixteenth no further action was taken, is that correct?’

‘What has Mira said this time?’

‘We are not at liberty to give you details at this time.’

‘Does my husband know about this?’

‘We have been unable to reach your husband.’

I imagined his indignation.

‘Mira must have a vendetta against me.’

‘You understand that we have to follow-up on all referrals.’

‘I don’t give you permission to speak to Rosie at school without me there.’

‘I’m afraid, the allegation concerns you, so, myself and a social worker will be speaking to Rosie alone or with one of the teachers depending on what Rosie feels most comfortable with.’

This stranger had just called Rosie by her name. She didn’t know Rosie. How dare she call her Rosie?

‘I don’t give you permission to speak to her at all.’

‘Please let me reassure you that we’ll make her feel as comfortable as possible. We’ll just have a quiet word with her before she pops off home. It won’t take longer than fifteen minutes or so.’

‘No. This is not going to happen.’

Two young teenagers in school uniform pushed open the door from the platform. I thought of little Rosie being interviewed alone with her tartan skirt pulled over her knees, about how scared she would be.

‘I understand this must be very worrying for you, Mrs Bradley, but we only have your daughter’s safety in mind.’

‘That’s what PC Connolly said when she barged into our home the other week. But what about all the stress you are causing for Rosie? If you care so much about her, how can you put her through all this?’

‘With regards to the allegations that have been made, to be honest, we don’t need your permission to speak to your daughter,’ DC Miles said. She spoke softly, as though tired, her power cumbersome.

I knocked my head back, as though knocking back a shot, and blinked up at the ceiling of the train to stop the gathering tears. I was not going to be weak. I was going to fight this all the way.

‘This is outrageous.’ I kicked at the train door with my foot, feeling the pain shoot up my leg and into my teeth.

‘We will be in touch shortly.’

‘You know my husband and I’ll be making a formal complaint after this is all over. You are making a terrible mistake and after you speak to my daughter, you’ll realise that.’

‘As I said, we will be in touch, Mrs Bradley.’

DC Miles hung up.

My hands were shaking violently. They were barely coordinated enough to grip my phone.

My handbag and my newspaper were on the seat as I had left them.

The two teenagers who had jostled past me had joined our carriage. They whispered and giggled at the far end.

When the man in the blue anorak glanced up at me again, I guessed he would see a change in me.

The world and everyone in it felt like an enemy. I gathered up my belongings and went out into the corridor again to call Peter.

As I listened to Peter’s ring tone repeat, I remembered he would be out on site today.

Giving up, I called the school. I was matter-of-fact with Clare the receptionist. ‘There’ll be a couple of police officers coming in to talk to Rosie after school today and I just wanted to confirm that this has been cleared by me,’ I said.

When I hung up, I put my palms to my cheeks and felt the hotness.

Humiliation pushed through my body right into my fingertips, hot under my nail beds.

Please train, move, I thought, please start moving. I need to get to my daughter. I need to protect her. Please, if there is a God up there, please help me.

The tannoy fired up again, the response to my pleas ignored: ‘Due to an electrical fault on the train, please could all passengers move off the 14.02 train to Hazelway and wait on the platform for further information. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to your journey.’

I wanted to scream. Who could I talk to about the delay? Might there be a guard who could shed some light, get things moving? Might there be a complaints line for me to call? Was there a manager I could shout at?

I piled off the train with the rest of the passengers, who began to sigh and text.

The guard I found to complain to ignored me as if I was invisible. The message board delivered no news in response to my insistence that it should. The other passengers stared blankly at my gesticulations and ‘can you believe this?’ eye-rolling. The complaints line put me on hold until I gave up. The rail website flashed me a red exclamation mark. It dawned on me – more slowly than it had on many of the other passengers seemingly – that there was nothing I could do.

I leant against a cold wall and I stared across the tracks, at nothing in particular, deciding that perhaps this delay was fate. My heart thumped; the rumble of a panic attack. The bustle of an over-packed train platform was like a buffer, like the padding on the walls of a cell, protecting me from myself. What would I be doing at Rosie’s school? Shouting at everyone, pacing outside the door? Exacerbating the situation? And if I was at home? Would I be cleaning and organising? Using the time to get started on the nursery? Pacing some more? Smashing Mira’s windows? Wherever I was in the world, I was utterly powerless until they had finished talking to her. The tension of the wait for the train stretched every minute into some unbearable endurance test. I focussed with tunnel vision on staying sane, on keeping it together, so that I could get home to Rosie in one piece. She needed me and I berated myself for not being there.