It wasn’t long before I knew she was Horton’s top swimmer - swimming was a very big deal at Horton. It hadn’t been when I was there - Fiona had been on the swim team, and she’d been an indifferent swimmer; - but apparently in the years since I’d been there, they’d had a student a year or more get a swimming scholarship to college. And Devon, judging by the trophies lined up in the hall outside of Thorpe’s office, was the best they’d had in a while. Nessa Rath was the school’s ‘silver medal’ swimmer, and she was the year above Devon, and Devon’s roommate as well - but she didn’t come close to beating Devon. Swimming prodigy, that was the one thing everybody at Horton knew about Devon.

And now she was gone.

*

The red brake lights of cars in front of me cut through the early dusk. The windscreen wiper squeals against the glass and the streets of Milham pass in a blur. This town that I used to hate, and then started to miss, and that right now, suddenly, I feel almost afraid of. I glance in my rearview for no good reason, as though Devon Hundley could somehow be there, an arm’s reach away, waiting to be discovered.

She’ll turn up, I tell myself. A couple of years ago we had two girls “disappear” who, it turned out, had plotted a getaway to New York City. It was all a stunt. The school went crazy, so did the parents, and then the students confessed and showed us the pictures on Instagram, the girls making fish-pout faces in front of Saks Fifth Avenue, giant shopping bags in hand courtesy of Daddy’s, or Mommy’s, credit card.

But Devon’s not like that.

Be quiet, I tell the voice in my head. She’ll turn up. Of course she will. What happened to me has nothing to do with -

I slam the brakes as the hazard lights of the car in front suddenly loom out of the fog. I shake my head, pull around the obstruction, and almost miss the turn-off for Jan’s road. Two squares of light beam out from the kitchen. She’s home. Jan’s retired now, but she used to teach at Milham High School. I park, open the squeaky, side-heavy gate, and let myself in. I can hear her moving around in the kitchen, the clink of a spoon in a mug. She puts her head round the door.

‘I was just listening to the news.’ She clicks her tongue. ‘There’s a girl missing. They said she goes to Horton.’

I suppress the shiver and focus on wiping my feet on the mat. It’s shaped like a hedgehog, as are a lot of things in this house, because Jan loves hedgehogs. The coat-rack has a sign that reads Pobody’s Nerfect.