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Rocío

"Can I come into your bed?"

I roll over tiredly and look at my five-year-old.

"Please? Can I come and snuggle?"

I try to focus on the clock, it's just about time to get up anyway. "Okay, come on in under the covers."

We lie there together, my son and I, enjoying each other's warmth until the alarm goes off.

"I did something silly," he says as we get up. "I went downstairs to wait for Rocío. Then I remembered."

He wants me to tell him that it wasn't silly, that she could have been there. I'm finding it hard to remember as well but every day it becomes more unlikely that Rocío will arrive in the morning.

She is 19. She has long dark-blonde hair. There is a tattoo on her shoulder but I can't remember what it is of. She drinks her coffee with extra milk and 3 sugars. Sometimes I am jealous of the lunches she cooks Connor because they look better than what I have made for myself. She wants to be an English teacher. She often goes to Fuengirola with her sister and stays out until morning. She speaks with a strong Andalucian accent when she isn't trying to speak slowly for my benefit. She has been practising riding our scooter every day and was planning on taking Connor on the back of it this week so that they could stop relying on me for lifts to school and back.

How do you bring someone to life with words?

Saturday evening she went to the village with her boyfriend and some friends. Around 9pm she walked back up to her house: someone said because she wanted to change before going to the fair in Fuengirola, someone else said because she had a row with her boyfriend. The walk home is on an open road going up a hill -- I've walked it often with or without Connor. I would not have given it a second thought if she had taken Connor with her that night and walked back up with him on her own. I've walked up the same road with him at 1am after going to the village for dinner.

She never arrived home. On the side of the road, at the building site, they found her shoes and blood. A lot of blood.

There has been no other trace, no other lead. She's just gone.