After a morning googling, I know the Wikipedia page off by heart and her image is branded on my brain. I’ve read the thirty-year-anniversary pieces and the few newspaper reports from 1985 that have been uploaded online. I know all of it. And yet, I keep searching and staring. Wondering if Lily Murphy can really be who I think she is. Was.

A shriek from outside pulls me back to reality. Through the window I can see Emily yanking Sophie away from something – they’re down at the end of the garden, and the trampoline is in the way, so I can’t see what. I shut the Mac and rush outside. Mark’s voice is in my head as I run. Calm down, you’re such a panicker, the kids are fine! But Mark’s not here.

‘What’s going on, what’s all the shouting?’

As I draw near, I realize Sophie’s face and hands are covered in big, black blotches.

Emily stands back, relinquishing her grip on her little sister.

‘What on earth – my God, Sophie!’

‘Coal,’ Emily says. ‘She bit into it. Or tried to.’

‘Coal? Where did you get coal?’

Sophie points to the far corner at the bottom of the garden, a shadowy spot obscured by low-hanging branches and tangled brambles. I make my way there, and the girls follow closely behind. It’s only when I’m almost on top of it that I see it. Nestled into the trees, camouflaged by surrounding foliage, sits an old coal bunker. I move closer, noticing that the somewhat decrepit fence that divides our property from our absent neighbours’ property comes to an abrupt end a few feet from the coal bunker, leaving a gap big enough for the kids to get through. And just beyond the coal bunker, there’s another gap, this time in the fence that borders the back of the garden. It’s quite hidden by dense evergreens, but if anyone can find an escape route, it’s Sophie. Making a mental note to remind her not to leave our garden, I brush loose branches off the top of the coal bunker before lifting the cover to peer inside. It’s still half full of coal. There’s something unsettling about that – as though some long-gone owner left suddenly. Unexpectedly. I shake myself. This is the Lily Murphy story spooking me. Of course people don’t take coal with them when they move house. I lower the cover, noticing that it’s almost as high as my waist, and I wonder how Sophie could have got at it.

‘She opened the hatch at the bottom,’ Emily says, reading my thoughts.

Sure enough, there’s a sliding metal hatch at ground level, currently open.

I turn to my youngest child.

‘Sophie, why would you eat coal?’

‘I didn’t,’ she says, the black dust on her lips belying her words. ‘I just licked it.’

Back inside, after googling ‘Is coal poisonous’ and handing now-cold bagels to the kids, I revert to Wikipedia, as if it’s going to say something new this time. But there’s nothing new. Nothing that answers any of my questions at all. A disappearance. A commonly held belief that she drowned. Devastated parents who wouldn’t give up. And a little girl who, the more I stare, looks just like the one in my nightmares.