Clara shared the photograph because of the mug.
It stood beside a bowl of cereal gone soft. Behind it, a chair had been pulled out and left at an angle. The caption said Elin's husband hadn't touched anything since she disappeared.
Clara lived alone. She could imagine an untouched breakfast becoming unbearable.
She shared the appeal, then went to work.
By lunchtime there were wedding photographs, a statement about Elin's recent difficulties and thousands of people promising to keep looking. Her husband, Daniel, thanked them individually whenever he could.
Clara found that touching.
At four, someone posted a picture taken that afternoon from a bus. A woman in a dark coat stood outside a row of shops. Her face was partly turned away, but the campaign had identified the bag on her shoulder.
Clara recognized the street.
She wrote: This is our end of town. The south end. I work near there.
Daniel replied almost immediately.
Thank you, Clara. She never goes there alone.
Her name looked unexpectedly important in his sentence.
She enlarged the picture. The woman stood beneath the awning of a small guesthouse. Clara sometimes passed its open kitchen window on her walk to the station.
She found the reception number and called.
"I can't discuss guests," the man said.
"Could you pass on my number? If she's there. Tell her people are worried."
He agreed to pass on a message if it was appropriate.
Clara didn't post the name of the place. She wanted to be certain before she brought a crowd to someone's door.
At five twelve, her phone rang.
"Did you call the guesthouse?"
The woman's voice was low and ordinary.
"Elin?"
"Please take down what you wrote."
Clara sat on the edge of her desk.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm trying to be."
"Your husband has everyone looking."
"I know."
Outside the office window, a delivery driver was arguing about a parking space. Clara shut the window so she could hear.
"He says you've been unwell."
"I left him. I left a note. I told him I was leaving him."
Clara opened the appeal again. The mug, the cereal, the empty chair.
"He says you didn't take your phone."
"It was his phone. He could see where it went."
"Do you need me to call someone?"
"I have someone. I'm waiting for a ride. I need people to stop telling him where I am."
Clara looked at Daniel's reply beneath her comment.
She never goes there alone.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"The breakfast photograph. Did he post that?"
"Yes."
"I didn't have breakfast. He broke that mug on Sunday. He must have bought another."
Clara deleted her comment.
It vanished from her screen. The small relief she felt lasted until she refreshed the page.
Someone had copied it into a new post with a screenshot of the bus photograph. Her name was circled.
A comment beneath it named the guesthouse. Daniel had replied with a heart.
"I've taken it down," she said. "People copied it."
Elin was silent.
"Are you in your room?"
"Yes."
"Please stay there. I'll call the police. I'll tell them you don't want to be found."
"By him," Elin said.
"By him."
Clara called the emergency number. She gave the guesthouse's address and explained about the search, the note and the mug. She was asked whether Elin had reported a threat.
"She's hiding from her husband. Thousands of us are helping him find her."
The operator took her details and said a car was being sent.
Clara left work without her coat.
On the stairs she called Elin again. No answer.
She posted beneath the copied image: Please remove this. She left voluntarily. Sharing her location may put her in danger.
Someone asked for proof.
Another person said they'd spoken to Daniel and he was a lovely man.
Clara called the guesthouse while she walked. The line was busy.
It took her seven minutes to reach it.
Daniel came out as she approached the door.
She recognized him from the wedding picture, although his hair was shorter now. In one hand he carried a canvas bag with a broken strap.
Elin's bag.
"Where is she?"
He looked at Clara as though he ought to know her.
"Upstairs."
He went past her. She took out her phone and called the emergency number again, giving the operator his description as she entered.
The man from reception was standing at the foot of the stairs.
"He said they'd found her," he told Clara.
Upstairs, a door stood open.
Elin was on the floor beside the bed. One shoe was off. The other had a little adhesive bandage stuck to its sole, the kind used to cover a blister.
Clara knelt and did what the operator told her. She counted aloud. Elin's hair kept slipping across her face, and Clara pushed it back as gently as she could.
The room smelled of the guesthouse kitchen below.
When the paramedics arrived, they moved Clara into the corridor. She stood with her hands held away from her clothes.
A police officer told her they'd stopped Daniel near the station. He asked her to keep her phone and all the messages.
Through the doorway, she saw one paramedic stop working. The other looked at his watch.
Clara's phone vibrated.
Daniel had posted an update before leaving the guesthouse.
FOUND HER. THANK YOU ALL.
The comments were arriving faster than she could read them. Hearts rose over a screenshot of her first clue. Somebody had written that the world needed more people like Clara.
She opened the reply box. Her thumb left a damp mark on the screen.
Inside the room, someone lifted Elin's loose shoe and placed it beside the other.
