I said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Go through the motions of finding something in your pocket, just in case someone’s watching.” The Gogans’ curtains hadn’t moved, but it was only a matter of time. “If anyone comes over to you, don’t talk to them.” Fiona nodded, out the window.

The padlock was still in place: the souvenir hunters and ghouls were biding their time. I found the key I had taken off Dr. Dolittle. When I stepped inside out of the wind, the instant silence rang in my ears.

I rummaged through kitchen cupboards, not bothering to stay clear of the blood spatter, till I found a bin-liner. I took it upstairs and threw things into it, working fast—Sinéad Gogan was presumably glued to her front window by now, and would be happy to tell anyone who asked exactly how long I had spent in here. When I was done, I put on my gloves and opened Jenny’s jewelry box.

The charm bracelet was laid out in a little compartment all its own, ready to put on. The golden heart, the tiny golden house, glowing in the soft light drifting through the cream lampshade; the curly E, chips of diamond sparkling; the J, enameled in red; the diamond drop that must have been for Jenny’s twenty-first. There was plenty of room left on the chain, for all the wonderful things that had still been going to happen.

I left the bin-liner on the floor and took the bracelet into Emma’s room. I switched on the light—I wasn’t about to do this with the curtains open. The room was the way Richie and I had left it when we finished searching: tidy, full of thought and love and pink, only the stripped bed to tell you something had happened here. On the bedside table the monitor was flashing a warning: 12º. TOO COLD.

Emma’s hairbrush—pink, with a pony on the back—was on her chest of drawers. I picked out the hairs carefully, matching the lengths, holding them up—they were so fine and fair, at the wrong angle they vanished into the light—to find the ones with roots and skin tags still attached where a careless sweep of the brush had tugged too hard. In the end I had eight.

I smoothed them together into a tiny lock, held the roots between thumb and finger and wound the other end into the charm bracelet. It took me a few tries—on the chain, the clasp, the little gold heart—before it caught tightly enough, in the loop holding the enameled J, that a tug jerked the hairs free of my fingers and left them fluttering against the gold.

I put the bracelet around one hand and pulled till a link bent open. It left a red mark across my palm, but Jenny’s wrists had been covered with bruises and abrasions where Pat had tried to hold her off. Any one of them, blurred by the others, could have come from the bracelet.