Somehow the cameras have managed to catch a menacing side to the woods and for a moment I see them how everyone else will too: like they are haunted.

When I hang up the phone to Bonnie I think of the girls I knew back then. We ranged in ages, many of which fell between mine and Bonnie’s: Tess Carlton, the daughter of my mother’s best friend; Emma Grey; Bonnie’s friend Iona; and of course Jill. Yet my memories of most of them are sketchy apart from Jill.

The last time I saw my friend was after Mum’s hurried attempts to tell me about the plan for us to leave the island. I wasn’t interested in the rental house in Winchester or the extra income from Dad’s new job and had raced to Jill’s house where she’d told me to meet her in our secret place in the clearing.

I hadn’t accounted for her dad following. It meant she had to whisper in my ear when she told me she couldn’t bear the thought of me leaving.

Tears flowed down our cheeks as her dad stepped nearer, telling her she needed to come back to the house. Now he was too close for me to ask her what was so important he couldn’t give me and my best friend some time together. But by then nothing Bob Taylor did surprised me.

I’d clutched on to Jill’s arms, searching her face as she trembled in my grip. ‘Don’t be scared,’ I said, hoping he wouldn’t hear. I chanced a look in his direction, but she was shaking her head at me. How I wished he would leave us so I could talk to her properly. ‘We’ll write to each other,’ I went on. ‘I’ll write first and send you my new address. Promise me you’ll write back?’

Jill nodded, her eyes glazed with tears she tried to blink away. ‘Promise. We’ll always be best friends.’

‘Blood sisters’ promise,’ I replied and we pressed our fingers together until her dad yelled at her and she finally pulled away. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I called out, my voice cracking with the weight of my pain.

‘I’ll miss you too,’ she cried back.

I kept my promise and wrote to Jill a week after we’d settled into the first house in Winchester. I rushed to the door every time the letterbox rattled. A week later I wrote again, begging her to write back, adding my address to the envelope, just in case she’d lost it the first time. I never once heard from her.

That afternoon the doorbell rings, rapidly followed by a loud knock.