What had Jai’s text said? I held my head in my hands and let my thoughts crystallise. Bex had had a second brother. Not her twin who died. Another brother.

I couldn’t fit it together in my head. My brain wasn’t functioning.

The sound of breathing to my left.

I spun round. There was another sofa. A person slumped on it. ‘What …’ I peered into the gloom. ‘Bex?’

She came into focus. Wild hair, bright eyes.

‘Bex! What the hell … Where are we?’

She looked as groggy as I felt. ‘I don’t know.’

I shook my head. Everything was too confusing. ‘What’s going on?’ I stood, teetering and nearly falling, and then wobbled my way to the far side of the room, where there was a door that looked like an external one. I pulled at the handle, but nothing moved. It wasn’t a normal door. It was solid metal. The kind of thing you see in prisons. A thread of panic started forming in my stomach.

I walked back to the sofa and sank down. If only everything didn’t hurt so much. I clutched my head. ‘He drugged us. Why did he do that?’

‘I don’t know and I’m so tired,’ Bex said.

I turned and looked into her eyes. I could see her more clearly now I’d adjusted to the gloomy light. Was she part of this, whatever this was?

A sound from behind me. I turned. There were two doors. Internal doors. One of them opened. Someone was there. A woman in a long nightshirt. A finely chiselled face. Blonde hair with streaks of grey. The woman from the photo in Tony’s front room, but older.

She turned to look behind her. Said a few words in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded Eastern European.

The door creaked open wider, revealing the room behind. A bedroom. It was dark but I could see the outline of someone sitting on a single bed. A young woman. Slim and pale with light blonde hair, wearing an old-fashioned nightdress, like the one the Pale Child wore. She must have sensed me watching her. She looked up, straight at me, and then shrank away, curling her legs in front of her and gripping them to her chest.

The older woman walked slowly towards us, pulling the door shut behind her. She was an odd mixture of young and old – her face smooth and unlined, her gait stiff. She came over and sat next to Bex. Bex froze as if scared, but I felt as if I was in the presence of someone wise, like a healer or a Zen master.

The woman reached her hand towards Bex’s face. Bex shrank away.

‘Rebecca?’ the woman said. ‘My baby Rebecca?’

Bex was completely still, staring at her. Nobody seemed to be breathing.

The woman whispered words I didn’t understand, staring at Bex, her eyes impossibly wide.