I was sure his door had been messed with, and it hadn’t been like that the other day. Why would he lie to me?

‘I try to make things better,’ Daniel said. ‘Why can’t they see that?’

I gave him an encouraging nod and made it clear I was listening. His anxiety was making him eager to confide, and that was rarely a bad thing in my game.

‘Nobody gets why I would work in an abattoir,’ he said. ‘But I help animals when they really, really need it. Surely the best thing you can do is to give them a bit of kindness before they die? To make sure they’re led gently to their end, not pushed or prodded, shouted at or threatened.’ He looked me right in the eye. ‘Who does more good for animals – someone who has nothing to do with farming or the meat industry at all, or someone like me who’s actually there? Who makes sure the animals are treated with respect? Those people who go undercover and expose the horrors in normal abattoirs, they despise me, they’re even threatening to kill me, but I do good.’

‘I understand,’ I said. And I did. I couldn’t do it myself, but if what he said was true, I respected him for it. I wondered what had happened to him to make him like this. So determined to do the right thing even though it put him in an unbearable situation, having to watch the animals he cared for being killed every day.

Beyond Daniel, in the far distance on the moor behind the caravan site, a flash of white caught my eye. ‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘that looked like the Pale Child. Over there on the face of the rock. Can you get onto the moor from here?’

‘You can, but—’

‘Show me!’ Two people had known a secret about the Pale Child and now they were both gone. There was no way I was letting this pass. I grabbed Daniel’s arm and pulled him in the direction of the distant white figure.

It was so far away it was hard to see, but it looked like someone scrambling up the side of one of the gritstone edges. The place rock climbers went, but it didn’t look like a rock climber. Rock climbers didn’t wear white dresses.

We took a path onto the moor, me stumbling along on my dodgy ankle, desperate to find out who this person was, and Daniel following reluctantly.

The path took us towards the higher ground. Ahead were looming cliffs, and stones in bizarre piles as if arranged by an immense rock-balancing artist. Bracken and heather and tussocks of grass made it hard going, and the ground was pitted with rabbit and badger holes. A sheep bleated in the distance. I was panting with the effort of running up the hill.