The paper was nearly a week old, saved for Daniel by the owner of the roadside burger van where he’d bought his breakfast. He was parked not 20 yards from it now, in a lorry park on the side of the A386 between Tavistock and Okehampton. It was a designated picnic spot, but at this hour of the morning, there were more trucks than cars. Pulling a wry face and shaking his head, Daniel Whelan took a sip of his latte-to-go and read on, his booted feet propped up on the dashboard of the lorry. When farmer Peter Daley (58) and his wife, Sally (56), discovered that granddaughter Emily had been missing on their 135-acre farm near Launceston for over an hour last Saturday morning, they feared the worst. Peter and Sally aren’t normally overanxious grandparents, but in this case they could be forgiven, because four-year-old Emily, who was staying with them for the weekend, is profoundly deaf. ‘I thought she was with Peter and he thought she was with me,’ Sally explained. ‘We were especially worried because there were tractors working in the fields and the men might not have noticed such a small child.
