I arrive at the park ten minutes later, my cheeks flushed and my armpits prickling with sweat, no longer feeling the chill in the air. Jess is at the slide, watching as Daisy launches herself down it over and over again. She turns as she hears me approach, a concerned frown on her face before she forces it away, pasting on a smile that would look fake to anyone who knows her as well as I do.

‘OK,’ I say, impatient to hear what she has to tell me. ‘What did you hear? Is it about Mr Snow?’

Jess is quiet for a moment as she watches Daisy climb the steps to the slide one more time, awkward in the thick-lined wellies she wears. Laurel has a pair exactly the same, and my heart turns over at the thought of them lined up underneath the radiator, waiting for her to slide her feet into them.

‘Don’t freak out, OK?’ Jess finally says, pushing her thick hair back as the wind whips it across her face. ‘I’m not even sure how true this is, it’s basically something I overheard someone saying back at the school hall after . . . well, after I saw him being taken away.’

‘What? Jess, please just tell me.’

‘The thing is . . . what they’re saying is that this isn’t the first time. They’re saying that he did it before. He abducted another little girl.’

It takes me a moment to fully process what Jessika has just said, my brain playing catch up. Surely, surely, this can’t be true?

‘What do you mean?’ I whisper, knotting my fingers together so tightly my knuckles turn white. ‘Another girl? But how? How come he’s walking around out there, living next to a school if this is true?’

‘I don’t know, Anna.’ Jess looks over at Daisy, supposedly keeping an eye on her charge, but really it’s so she doesn’t have to make eye contact with me. ‘It’s exactly what they said at the school. Listen, the police will know about it. They’ll investigate him properly and it’ll be OK. If it’s him, then they’ll find her, won’t they?’ She hoists her bag onto her shoulder and calls to Daisy. ‘I have to get her back home. Do you want to come with us?’

I shake my head. ‘No, thank you. I have some things I need to do.’

‘OK.’ Jess runs her eyes over my face one more time but doesn’t make a move to hug me goodbye. ‘Be careful, Anna.’

I wait until Jess and Daisy have left the park before I find a bench and pull out my phone, bringing up the Safari page. My fingers are itching I’m so eager to start my search, but before I can type in Mr Snow’s name, I find my fingers typing my own name into the Google search bar.