“She only has me.” Then I realised they might not know what had happened, or that people thought Dad was dead. “Chris, Dad never came home.”

I would have gone on, told him what Gary told me, but Chris snorted. “He never left.”

“What lovely, lovely lemons,” murmured Mitch feverishly, near the floor. The birds around us were quiet. “What fine fruit, Mrs Scott; how do you grow them in this soil? Blood and bone, blood and bone.” He laughed and pinched the tendon at the back of my ankle. I jumped forward.

“Stop it, Mitch!” I said. “Chris—”

“Do you know Mr Alleman drives to Woodwild and talks to the trees?” Mitch whispered.

I tried not to think of Gwenda’s story—the Woodwild school was nothing to me; I had found my brothers. Yet if there was any truth to Gwenda’s story, our father was there when Jim Alleman and the other children vanished. I shook off the thought.

“Dad went away!” I insisted. “He’d always been emotionally absent…” I trailed off. Those words came from my mother’s books, and she’d only read those after she’d persuaded my father to move us to town. That it would be easier to raise a daughter there.

I remembered. I had visited this place with my father, yes, but once, we’d all lived in that house, near this shed, the boys shouting and the dust like a golden veil in the sunlight—how could my fastidious mother have endured the roughness of it, the unconstrained light and limbs?

“He left us.” But this certainty was fracturing.

What did I know for sure? Dad’s car was found crashed. Trish’s dad had come to Upper Spicer Street. My mother had been shocked, gentle. We don’t need to dwell on that, do we, Bettina? We were here all night. Bettina was here with me, weren’t you, Bettina? But Gary and Trish were sure I’d been with them.

No, that was wrong. They said they’d covered for me.

“People pitied Nerida,” said Chris, amused. I wished he’d say Mum—he sounded so superior. “Do you really think Aberdeen asked her any hard questions? Do you think anyone would look where she didn’t want them to? Digging up her garden?”

“Why would they?” I retorted. “They found a car, not a body.”

“Exactly,” said Chris.

Mitch was humming a high, wretched little song.