Finally Bex softened. Burst into tears. ‘Mum?’

The woman reached and pulled Bex to her and they sobbed. I couldn’t stop staring. How could this woman be Bex’s mother? Bex’s mother went back to Ukraine thirty years ago.

‘Nina?’ I said.

The woman nodded. ‘I am Nina. I was Nina.’

Eventually Bex pulled away. ‘What’s happening?’ she said. ‘Where are we?’

Nina blinked back tears. ‘He wants to keep us safe.’

My brain didn’t want to accept this, even though things had started slotting into place when I’d seen the photograph of the woman in Tony’s living room. The woman with the pale hair.

Bex stood and took a few strides away, then came back. ‘No. No. You’re not saying he … You’re not saying you’ve been … here? Oh my God!’

‘He didn’t want me to take you to Ukraine,’ Nina said. ‘He didn’t think you’d have a good life. You or your brother and sister.’

Bex was breathing heavily. ‘My sister, yes, Kirsty – you wanted to take her too?’

There was a long silence. ‘No. Not Kirsty. She would be better here. Your other brother and sister weren’t yet born.’

Maybe it was the drugs Tony had given me. Nothing made any sense. ‘The young woman in the room behind?’ I whispered. ‘Is she …’

‘Sofia,’ Nina said. ‘She’s scared of you. Thinks you’re the TV people. She’s only ever seen other people on the TV.’

Bex spoke so quietly I could barely hear. ‘I thought you left me.’

‘I never left you,’ Nina said. ‘I would never have left you. He put me in here. Me and my unborn babies. He thought he was protecting us.’

‘I can’t …’ Bex put her head in her hands.

‘There was a boy too,’ Nina said. ‘Sofia’s brother.’

I blinked a couple of times. Tried to clear my head. I didn’t want to believe it, even though the solution to the mystery of the Pale Child was starting to click into place in my mind.

‘Is that his daughter?’ I whispered. ‘Has he kept his daughter in this room for her whole life?’

And there had been a boy. I remembered the text from Jai. The bones in the wood. Bex’s brother. Bex’s rapist. Violet’s father. The Pale Child.

‘Tony likes us to wear white clothes,’ Nina said, ‘because Tim was wearing dark clothes when he was run over. White clothes keep you safe. He gives us vitamins. And makes sure we look after our teeth. He has medicine for the pigs that he gives us if we need it.’

‘Oh my God, Nina,’ I said. ‘You’ve been here over thirty years.’ I sank back on the sofa, head pounding.