‘Oh Frankie,’ Helen whispered. ‘Draw me a nap to tell me where you are?’

Both of them gone, Alice and Frankie. But Helen wasn’t so worried about Alice. She’d be home soon enough, after her diva tantrum had deflated and her money run out. She was with Larry – Larry’s mum had rung in tears that morning and Helen was ashamed that she had felt little about the plight of Alice and her scrawny boyfriend, and had almost had to pretend to sound half as concerned as the hysterical woman on the end of the line.

Helen turned her attention back to the NAP OF MY ROAD. Alice had drawn a picture of their blue front door for Frankie, and the garden path, with shapes of cars outside that she had got Frankie to attempt to colour in. The picture was annotated with big X’s over several of Frankie’s random instructions: Fluffy cat from Number 18, Max’s house, Sandpit, Where Red Ted’s Eye Fell Out.

Helen’s own eye fell on something she hadn’t noticed before. There was an X on the far side of the road, as drawn by Alice, and underneath it were the words Cross Ghost Who Lives in the Lamp Post.

Cross ghost who lives in the lamp post? What did that mean? Helen got up and went to Frankie’s window, hauling up the roller blind to look out. The place across the road Alice had marked with an X was outside number 26, where an elderly gay couple had lived until recently, when one of them had been taken ill and they had both moved to a nursing home. The house had been empty since, so no cross ghosts there – or anywhere else in their street, that Helen was aware of. She frowned. So many of Frankie’s comments were fairly nonsensical, and that had become part of the adults’ enjoyment of the ‘nap’ drawing game. But they usually had some sort of basis in reality, or a recollection of something that had happened to her that day.

Who was the cross ghost and what was it doing outside her house? Helen stared at the nap for so long that the dotted lines began to undulate, swirling slowly before her eyes. And that other drawing, the one of the man looking in through the window that they’d found the night Frankie had been taken – where had that come from?