Everybody at the Penrith and Lakes had their own theories. She was a runaway, a hitcher, a foreign illegal, a drug addict, and she was a nobody. To Annie, the girl was a lost soul, she’d told Joe: she’d looked into her eyes. She’d seen the torment. But, at Castlerigg, she’d also seen the way the girl looked at Callum.

A shiver went down her back as she dropped the boys at the end of the track that morning, the start of a new autumn term, and then made her way to the A66 and on to Penrith. She looked in her rear-view mirror and watched them stand at the side of the road, hands in pockets, occasionally speaking to one another, waiting for the bus. It wouldn’t be long before snow started to fall, around November time, and the buses would struggle to make it on time. But that was a source of excitement and anticipation for all the school children in Keswick in the winter: snow days. Annie reflected that when she was a child, snow days weren’t a thing. It seemed that suddenly nowadays, teachers found it difficult to negotiate a little snow drift in their four-by-fours, whereas when she was at school, a tiny Ford with a screaming engine and flimsy tyres fared better against the elements.

Character was everything.

The memory of the girl in the field at Castlerigg came back to her as she found a gap in the traffic and pulled on to the busy A road. She’d ushered her boys away from the sight of the naked woman. Joe had taken over and his survival instincts had kicked in. They couldn’t get her to the car because every time they tried she’d struggle and cause a fuss, so they threw clothes and blankets over her, with Annie insisting that the boys go and wait in the vehicle. They refused. Understandably they were scared to leave their parents, but it had come as a surprise to witness the boys’ vulnerability.

The young woman was all Callum had talked about since they’d found her. He’d bombarded his mother with question after question: did she know anything? Was she all right? Who was she? Had the police made sure she was safe? What was being said at the hospital?