The rest of the day had been slow and painful for the couple. Harry had taken Jessica to her school in a vain attempt to get her to think about something else. Alone in their house, James and Harry had found hundreds of stupid reasons to avoid each other all day long, but none of them wanted to leave the house, hoping that Chas may call with some news.

When Harry had come back with the children in the evening, they were spared the trouble to pretend everything was fine, because Jess and Tom were so sad and worried about Maggie that they weren't paying any attention to their parents.

When Harry left Jessie and entered her bedroom around 10pm, James was lying on his side, his back to the door, pretending to be fast asleep. She didn't waste any time into slipping silently into bed before he could change his mind. She turned off the light and closed her eyes resolutely.

It took them a long time to fall asleep, and even then it wasn't a peaceful sleep; neither of them wanting to talk about what had been said earlier; both of them suffering in silence because of what wasn't said now.

...

On Saturday morning, the phone rang a bit before noon. The tension between Harry and James had abated a bit during the morning, but something was definitively missing in the way they looked at each other.

Harry answered the call. "Hello?"

"Harry." Chas sounded nervous "Listen I need you and Dempsey to come here."

Harry frowned, it didn't sound like good news. "Did you find…" she began but Chas talked over her "Not on the phone. You have to come."

"Ok, we'll be there first thing this afternoon." she promised

"No, no, you don't understand. You need to come right now."

"Right now?" she repeated, now she was worried. Harry glanced around her, trying to meet James' eyes but he was sitting on the couch, talking with his son, his daughter cuddled up against him. Well at least, the kids hadn't noticed anything.

She lowered her voice. "Chas what…" He interrupted her again "Just come, I'll explain." He paused and added "Tell your children to stay home."

Harry hung up slowly. A big lump had appeared in her throat during the phone call. It definitely wasn't going to be good news for Maggie if Chas refused to talk about it on the phone and didn't want Jessica to come. She took a deep steadying breath and crossed the lounge.

"Chas called." she said in a casual voice.

"Yeah? They found her?" The hope in Jessica's voice broke Harry's heart but she forced herself to remain as calm and neutral as possible as she looked back in Jessica's big blue eyes.

"He didn't say so darling, I'm sorry." Then she turned to James. "He would like us to join him at the MET to help him sort out some information. Papers, names, things like that" she invented.

Dempsey was a bit surprised that someone could want him to sort papers, but he was also willing to help. "Sure! We'll go there after lunch."

"In fact, he'd prefer us to go now." She shot him a meaningful look, stressing as much as she dared on 'now'.

"Of course..." he said slowly, getting the message.

"I'm coming too!" Jessie said brightly, eager to do something for her friend.

"No darling, you stay here." Harry answered quickly.

"But I want to come!" the girl started to argue and she looked at her father for support. She couldn't believe it when he said "You heard your mum. You stay here."

"You couldn't help Jess." Her mother still tried to explain while she grabbed her jacket "We'll only be looking at dates and names on the computer. Besides you're all messed up, I'd like you to rest today."

She leaned to kiss her on the forehead but Jessica backed away, upset. Harry sighed, she couldn't blame her daughter. She waved good bye to Tommy and left with James.

As they sat in the car, James looked at her closely "We ain't going to look at names, are we?"

"I don't know, James. Chas refused to say anything on the phone."

Seeing she was anxious, he put a reassuring hand on her thigh and started the car.

"We'll see then."