Was she a changeling? Nicole and Hannah had only been missing seven days. How would they, whoever they were, produce a duplicate in that time? Mind you, there was a spell, dissimulo, that could warp flesh and bone to fit a certain image. Could a substitute have been sculptured to look like Nicole? That would be very bad – when dissimulo let go the warped tissue fell apart. It was how Lesley had lost her face. I felt a twist of fear in my stomach that must have shown on my face because the little girl, who may or may not have been Nicole, frowned at me.

And the frown was like a slap in the face – or would have been, had I not built up a resistance to this sort of thing. Still, the girl didn’t have to know that. I made a point of looking stricken.

‘Do you like chocolate?’ she said. ‘I like chocolate – I don’t know why anybody eats anything else.’

‘Chocolate’s nice,’ I said. ‘So your name is Nicky, is it?’

There was a smear of chocolate in the corner of her mouth and a sticky sweet wrapper caught in the hair behind her ear.

‘I’m Nicole,’ she said primly. ‘But you can call me Princess.’

‘Well, Princess,’ I said, and pulled up out my sample kit and showed her the cotton bud. ‘I need to swab the inside of your cheek.’

‘What if I don’t want you to?’ she asked.

‘That wouldn’t be very nice,’ I said. ‘A proper princess would want to be helpful.’

She gave that comment the consideration it deserved.

‘I think no,’ she said, and I got the full changeling Princess Barbie effect complete with Ken’s house pool and the train-to-trot homicidal unicorn collectible set with realistic neighing. ‘But I don’t mind if you think that you did.’

You’re so busted, I thought.

I was just dithering about what to do next when I was saved by the return of Victoria with another woman in tow.

I recognised her at once.

‘Aunty Sharon’s here to see you again,’ said Victoria.

The journalist cooed hello to the fake Nicole before turning her beady eyes on me.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.

‘I’m just on the way out,’ I said, and with that I beat a hasty retreat. But not before half-inching a couple of empty Pepsi bottles. The consent forms merely specified collected biological sample – it didn’t specify how I had to collect it.

Media Compliant

14

Media Compliant