Daisy’s door was open when they got back to their corridor, but she wasn’t there. Half an hour after Esther had forced her purchases into spaces they were not designed to occupy, she checked Daisy’s room again. Gently swirling golden light from a glitter lamp bathed the room in honey, the radio, turned low, played soothing world music, but there was still no sign of Daisy.

Esther took one look at the scene and went to find Susan.

“I’m worried about Daisy.”

“When are you not?” Susan was lying on her bed beating her laptop at chess and didn’t bother looking up.

“I’m serious. She doesn’t have any lectures this late, and her door’s been open since we got back.”

Susan shoved her laptop aside and sat up in alarm, slapping an overly dramatic hand to her face. “Oh, my gosh! Do you think she’s been abducted by aliens?”

But Esther wasn’t playing. “I think we should check the showers in case she’s fainted and cracked her skull open.”

“A vivid and disturbing image.” Susan dropped the act and stood up. “One that I now can’t get out of my head.”

Although there were showers on their floor, one had a broken shower head, another’s thermostat couldn’t be coaxed above room temperature, and Daisy swore that the third was haunted, so it was to the floor below that Esther and Susan hurried, their pace getting quicker with every step, so that they were sprinting by the time the door was in sight.

Steam rose from behind the first shower curtain.

“Daisy! Is that you?” Esther prodded at the curtain.

“Do you mind?” A girl’s head emerged from behind the curtain, shortly followed by a boy’s. “Some of us are trying to get clean here.”

“You say that . . .” Esther hurried past before nudging Susan and whispering, “Looked more like they were getting dirty to me.”

There was no one in the second shower, but the curtain was drawn across the third—although there was no sign that the shower was on.

“At least there’s no blood,” Esther murmured, glancing at Susan before she raised her voice. “Daisy? Are you in there?”

A groaning kind of sigh sounded from behind the curtain, and the girls looked at each other in horror.

“Pleasedon’tbenakedpleasedon’tbenaked . . .” Susan yanked the curtain aside.

There, still in her bathrobe, slumped against the wall, her forehead resting on the taps, was Daisy. And she was sound asleep.

Once Daisy was showered and dried and clothed in the outfit she’d laid on her bed before she’d gone down for a shower, she accepted a mug of cocoa from Susan and sat at the kitchen table.

“It’s six o’clock on a Tuesday, Daisy,” Esther said. “You really should not be this tired.”