Dad,

It’s such a beautiful day that we have decided to go up to the tree to phone Mum and then take the dogs for a walk. We’ll probably be back before you get the chance to read this, but thought I should just let you know.

Love Millie

Dan dropped the note on the table and glanced out of the window. Darkness was beginning to shroud the hills opposite, and already he could make out a pair of headlights darting through the trees on the road at the other side of the loch. He shrugged his jacket back on again and walked out into the garden, feeling the night drop its invisible veil of chilling dampness over him. He hurried round to the back of the cottage and ran up the hill to the tree. There, on the ground, he found a newly discarded Hollywood chewing gum wrapper. They had definitely been there.

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes! Where have you got to, you silly girls,” he murmured under his breath as he pressed on up the hill. He felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead at the effort of the climb and the constant lifting of his feet to clear the tall, springy heather, but they turned cold as they trickled between his eyebrows and down the side of his nose. Just as he reached the top of the hill, he fell flat on his face in the heather, his shoe having lost its grip on a lichen-covered stone. He pushed himself back to his feet and stood motionless, looking around him.

“Oh, my God,” he said slowly.

He had never ventured that far up the hill before. In the near-darkness, he could see now that nothing lay beyond its summit except total emptiness. He could walk on and never stop, and he prayed to God that that was not what Millie and Nina and the dogs had chosen to do. He yelled out their names, but his voice was lost to the rising wind. He tried to whistle in a vain attempt to attract the dogs’ attention, but his mouth had gone dry, and all that came out was a pathetic exhalation of air. He turned and began to make his way clumsily down the hill, fumbling in the jacket pocket for his mobile phone. He stopped long enough to get Josh’s number up onto the screen, and then continued his descent, bouncing over the heather, with the phone clamped to his ear.

“Josh?”

“Hi, Dad. How are things?”

“Where are you?”

“Just leaving work. I’m going to come straight home this evening.”

“Josh, the girls have gone.”

“Have they? Where?”

“I don’t bloody know. They left a note for me on the kitchen table, saying that they were going off for a walk. They’re not back, Josh.”

“Oh, they’ll be fine, Dad. Those girls have never walked farther than the length of Portobello market in their lives.”