I collect first moments. Straight after these flashes of light, that’s when my forgetting begins. The first time I looked into the eyes of my daughters, Ines and Elly. The first time I met their father. The first time we stepped inside our house. The first time I sat on a school bench. The first time I got a commission. The first time my mother took me to the gynaecologist. The first time. My first time was panting and poking in the dark. I don’t know how it happened. I just wanted to prove that I could do it. I acted as if I’d had a hundred men before, slutty and knowing. I rubbed my arse up against Casanova’s groin. I was relying on the fact he was still learning the ropes. He didn’t notice my blood. He honked his horn as he drove off. I closed the blinds.

The first time I saw Hamid was at a party. A woman was putting a pistol made of porcelain into his hand. He grinned, helplessly, good-naturedly, swinging his other arm, and reached for a glass of red wine. I was convinced he must have three children at home. My red dress was radiant, but I sat quietly in the corner. He didn’t notice me. This man is spoken for, I repeated to myself like a catechism. But he didn’t look at me. The small woman with the tiger print trousers was eagerly explaining to him how long she had fired the porcelain in the oven and which gallery she was exhibiting in. Hamid smiled politely. He was the only man at the party wearing a suit. The hostess, my dance teacher, was celebrating her birthday. She had invited a random selection of people who were strangers to each other. Perfect for meeting someone in fact. But it didn’t work out with Hamid and me. I was too proud and at the same time too shy to talk to him. And what about him? He didn’t notice me. After the party I left for France for three months, where I slurped oysters and doubted whether there were any men you could trust these days. My dance teacher had been planning to marry her boyfriend and dance partner a few weeks after her birthday. The wedding was called off. He had threatened to throw himself off the roof. But Hamid and I met each other a second time. It wasn’t fate: it was something I cooked up. I thought up a script. I tracked Hamid down on the internet, invited him to view my profile. I revealed that I’d seen him once before and hadn’t been able to get him out of my head. I wouldn’t have deigned to give any other man so much as an encouraging smile. Hamid reached for the line I had cast. I was responsible. But to friends I would sigh and say it was destiny. We had a second first moment.

First moments are treacherous. You have to stick it out from that moment forth. I seek out first moments, I contrive sensation for myself in my quiet suburban life which is devoid of all unpredictability. I try to picture how wild and determined I was as a young woman. When I catch the spark in Ines’s eyes that used to be in mine, I feel old and lifeless. But I can transform myself. For that I need nothing more than make-up and cottage cheese. Both of them make me glow, make my skin smooth. First moments are a matter of perspective. The beginning of the end. The first slug of coffee in the morning. The first time I refused his advances. The first time I tried to switch the phone off, not to pick up the papers any more, to avoid the news. The first time I was drawn back to the data stream, when I tried once again to find Elly on there. Because Elly is now my first and last moment. Elly. My little girl, my wild child, my sanctuary. She’s the one. After her, I forgot everything. All the first moments are suddenly just final glimpses, the beginning of the end, harbingers of doom. Elly has gone, disappeared. No one knows what happened to her. There was no demand for ransom, no shoe found, no hair. She cycled to training and she never arrived.

Now I feel my way through the house in the dark. I run my hands over the furniture, the walls, the pictures hanging there. I don’t stumble on the stairs. It’s the uncertainty which is slowly eating me up. Hamid instructs detectives. He organises action groups and manhunts far and wide. He searches for her in the most remote places, in the most roundabout ways. In vain. Elly is gone. Everything we had goes out of focus, everything we experienced with her falls apart. We are rotting from the inside out. The poison bubbles up until it’s in our mouths. Hamid tries to give me hope again. He finds descriptions of persons who match her, he telephones authority after authority. In the end it’s always the same answer. Elly has gone. We still have Ines. I hope she stays.

I ask myself whether Elly has run away, whether she couldn’t put up with us any longer. I ask myself whether I fought too much with Hamid, whether I was too impatient with Elly, who was contrary, rebellious from an early age. I remember her pinching my upper thigh as a young child. The way she kept pinching me over and over, laughing like an imp, even though I shrieked and scolded her. I remember I ended up digging my fingers into her leg. She barely reached my hips, she was so small. She was shocked to death; she couldn’t breathe, her face went red, and only then her features dissolved. A wet baboon mask. When I finally let go, an imprint remained. Elly shouted for her father, her grandparents. But no one was there. And she got no comfort from me.

Now my hair is greasy, stiff with dirt. I slip into the same clothes every day. My fingernails have grown long. They curve. Everyone claims that time heals all wounds, but our time stands still. The pain that I feel doesn’t fade. It comes in waves, surges and breaks again, over and over. First it came as a blow. It left me numb for weeks on end. Then senseless anguish, sobbing, collapse. I despise myself, I loathe what is left of my family. I can’t change it. I wish I had never become a mother. The danger, the pain, the fear that is wrapped up in motherhood is something I can’t bear. There are no more first moments. When your child disappears, everything stops.

I call up beautiful memories to pray myself back to life. I think about Hamid’s hands in my lap, his smiling lips; about Ines on the horse, her back straight, her plait dancing on top. I slowly feel my way towards the memories of Elly. As a baby she was neat and long. Soft padded fists, rings of fat on her thighs, a triple chin. But as soon as she docked onto my breasts, she had the force of a truck. She sucked so hard I saw stars. I took pills for the pain, to keep going. On the upside, she could tell night from day by four weeks and she slept through. Apparently that was a huge achievement for a newborn. It meant I could get enough sleep. But rather than relaxing, I kept watch anxiously, in case some calamity might befall her. Was she breathing regularly? Was her stomach swollen or did her nappy need changing? Or was that Ines? I don’t know any more. Their baby faces are superimposed on each other. I don’t know where one begins and the other ends. Sudden cot death and other macabre afflictions haunted my thoughts. But we were spared. Fear was my constant companion. It is gone now. I no longer look left and right when I cross the street. What else is going to happen to me? Everything seems to be at an end. I try to take care of Ines, to pay attention to her. But I don’t seem able to tame my thoughts.

Elly disappeared almost four years ago. With no prior warning. Simply gone, as if she had been put out like a flame. Everyone suspects that we threw her out or killed her. The police investigations took that direction. Perhaps it was just an accident, the officer suggested. As if a confession would burst out of us when faced with her understanding. At home we cursed and raged about these suspicions. But the police clung to them. The distrust against us grew. It spread out, star-shaped. We saw it in people’s eyes in the pharmacy, in the bus driver’s slight hesitation when she opened the door for us. The suspicion took root. Even the weather is against us. It’s always too cold or too hot. I know I haven’t committed a crime. But what was Hamid doing that day? I’m not one hundred per cent sure where he was when. I don’t dare ask him. But I pay more attention now. Where he says he’s off to, when he comes back. Which female friends he mentions suspiciously infrequently. It wouldn’t really affect me if he did cheat on me, or so I imagine. Worse things happen after all. The pain of losing Elly is a fire that never goes out. And even Hamid is standing on the outside, far away, on the other side of the smoke.

After Elly’s disappearance I was prescribed pills. I couldn’t sleep. But it was the wrong drug. It just made me mushy. It didn’t touch the sides. I had to concoct my own mixture to get through the day. Something to make me sleep, something to wake me up, and something for the time in between. I needed to get through it. Sometimes, I can sense that Elly is alive. Then my excitement feels like a wing fluttering inside me. Like individual feathers stroking my diaphragm. I know that it makes no sense to think about her surviving. Elly was so small, so young when she disappeared. But she was old enough to identify any perpetrator, and I don’t believe that she ran away. Why would she? It’s like I’m living on autopilot. Structure is the only thing holding me up. I keep the tablets in moderation too. Although I’ve thought more than once that I can’t go on. I just want everything to stop. But I still have one daughter. I need to live for her. I need to look after her. I don’t go out any more. How could I enjoy myself when my youngest daughter is suffering? How could I dance while she decomposes?

I can’t switch off. Without the tablets I would never have managed to carry on. I am infinitely grateful to Big Pharma. Maybe there are a few cases where medication like this did more harm than good. But in actual fact psychopharmaceuticals are a blessing. They have saved my life. Without the pills I would have given up. Maybe I would have jumped, or poisoned myself with exhaust fumes. Or thrown myself under a train. On the internet there are detailed instructions for suicide. You can even buy stud guns. I imagine pressing one of those to my temples. But the risk of it slipping is too great. Then I would probably be permanently paralysed and wouldn’t even be able to kill myself. Enough. I will wait for Elly. I can sense she’s alive.