Fran decides to drive on, finds a space by a gate to pull over, and gets out of the car.

She walks down the track, stepping slowly, listening hard. Out here, away from the streetlamps in the centre of the village, the only light is the faint glow of the moon. She stops walking as she hears a car door shut, then another. Seconds later Tom says, ‘Are you sure she’s here?’ If Renata replies, Fran doesn’t catch it.

She inches forward, keeping close to the bushes that flank the driveway. As the path curves to the right she spots Renata’s Range Rover and, looming behind it, a house. When Renata said, ‘holiday home’, Fran had imagined a two or three bedroom cottage with low ceilings and doorways you’d hit your head on but there’s nothing small about this place. It’s detached, four or five bedrooms, with a stone porch and wide windows on either side. The lights come on in the room to the right of the door then, seconds later, in the room to the left.

They’re looking for Jenna.

Fran darts out from the darkness of the driveway as one of the lights in the upstairs rooms is flicked on. She rounds the Range Rover, runs up to the porch and pushes at the door. It’s heavy and well-made but it opens easily – in their hurry to get into the house Tom and Renata must have left it unlocked. Beyond the porch, filled with welly boots and umbrellas, is another door, also ajar. Fran moves silently into the porch and listens at the hall door.

She can hear footsteps pounding back and forth above her head and doors being opened and shut. Tom’s voice rings out above the noise.

‘Jenna! Where are you?’

‘She must be hiding,’ Renata shouts back. ‘She probably got scared when she heard the car pull up. Jenna! It’s okay! You can come out now.’

More footsteps, then the house goes quiet. Are they searching under the beds? Looking in the wardrobes? Fran’s grip tightens on the hallway door – should she go in and help them? She feels torn. There’s still a part of her – a dominant, logical part – that believes what Caroline told her: that Jenna was murdered. But the other part – the emotional, grieving part – is hoping for a miracle, for her sister to be alive, for the blood and the rocks and the flip-flops to all be a terrible mistake. If Jenna is in the house she wants to be the person to find her, to throw her arms around her before anyone else.

Before she can open the door, footsteps thumping down the stairs make her freeze.

‘Jenna!’ Tom shouts. He’s a dark pixelated shape, twenty feet away, beyond the mottled glass of the hallway door.