And then she found him. Henry. Wearing the pyjamas from the night he’d disappeared, he looked exactly the way she saw him in her dreams. Except, in the dreams, he cried and called to her. Now, he was silent. Unresponsive. There was no flicker of recognition under the white-covered eyes.

“You must understand.” Grace rubbed Leanne’s hand. A comforting touch. “I did this for them.”

“You did this?” The words sounded foreign, like they were coming from someone else.

“I had to. My poor babies—my darlings. You had lost your families. There was no one left to love you. What was I supposed to do? Force you back out into a world that didn’t want you?”

Grace’s fingers were warm, but the rest of Leanne was horribly cold. She kept turning, staring into the blank faces clustered around her. There were so many of them.

“I could not have children of my own, but I could save the ones that had been entrusted to me. And so I did. I brought them over, one at a time.”

“Brought them over?”

“Into the second realm.” Grace’s voice was soft, so quiet that it almost dissolved into the air. “The step beyond. I am a guide. There are not many of us left.”

The children stared at her, unspeaking and unmoving. They were nothing more than dolls.

“It hurt me. It made me tired and weak, and so I could only carry over one or two a week. But I did my best. It was a small cost to make sure you would be safe here with me, in a world that can’t hurt you, where you will never feel pain, where you will never feel another moment of sadness.”

She remembered Grace coughing and shaking, perspiration dotting her forehead. The illness had gotten worse in batches. Always following when one of the children had disappeared.

“You were so frightened when your brother went first,” Grace whispered. She had moved closer without Leanne realising. They stood side by side, so close that Leanne could feel Grace’s breath on her cheek. “I was weak, and my mother’s tea could only help so much, but I was still going to try. To bring you over the following night. So that you wouldn’t have to be without him again. But you ran. Sweetheart, why did you run? Why did you leave?”

The children around her abruptly moved. Their mouths opened, and they spoke, one voice coming from a hundred different directions. “Why did you leave?”

Leanne shook her head. Tears slipped down her cheeks.