Ruth said nothing for a moment. In silence, she looked down at Lily’s bruised skin, and out at the building site below and the woods just beyond. In the distance, they could hear people shouting Lily’s name.

‘We’d better tell them we found her,’ Mary said, beginning the process of standing up, still holding Lily.

‘No.’ Ruth put out a hand. ‘Wait.’

Afterwards, it always seemed like a jumble of words and movements that Mary could never quite order correctly. Like cobbled-together scenes from a very old home movie. Had she given in immediately to Ruth’s suggestion or had they sat there for an eternity, debating in hurried whispers? She liked to tell herself it was the latter. That she’d put thought and reason into it; that she hadn’t taken the decision lightly. That Ruth had tried to convince her while she held out. Appalled at first. But she was never quite sure. Ruth was offering an escape hatch and in her occasional lucid memories of that day, Mary suspected she’d jumped at it.

‘I’ll go home and get my car. I’ll park it at the end of the pathway – the shortcut through the woods. I’ll come back here to get her then. If I take her out the back door and through the woods,’ Ruth said, ‘nobody will see me.’

‘What if they see her in your car?’

‘She can crouch down in the footwell and I’ll cover her with a blanket. I’ll tell her it’s a game of Hide and Seek.’

‘And I’ll wait here?’ Mary asked.

Ruth thought for a moment, then reached down and slipped off one of Lily’s little red shoes. She handed it to Mary.

‘Put that in your pocket. When I’m back after getting the car, you go down and leave the shoe beside the river.’ She paused. Waiting, perhaps, for Mary to understand. To be OK with what she was suggesting. Mary nodded, her throat tight.

‘You must leave it somewhere it will be seen, and quickly. But you can’t find it yourself, in case it leads to suspicion later.’

Later. God. Was she really going to do this?

‘You’ll have to be smart about it. Just grab whoever is nearby and ask them to search the area with you, but let them find the shoe. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you must scream, shout, draw attention. Get everyone to the riverbank. That’s when I’ll take her out the back door and through the woods to the car.’

‘But what if someone catches you?’

‘Worst case scenario, if they do, I explain I just found her, I’m taking her to find you. Nobody is going to think a cranky sixty-year-old woman is kidnapping a child.’

Kidnap. Was that what this was? A kidnap? A crime? Of course it was a crime. Mary looked at Lily, at her sleepy, tear-stained face, at the purple bruises still visible under the hem of her t-shirt. A crime, yes. And an escape hatch.

In the end, the first part was easiest, though it didn’t feel that way at the time. Mary stayed with Lily while Ruth got her car. She held Lily close, terrified someone would find them before Ruth got back, but half hoping too that at any moment Robbie or Della would burst through the door, and she wouldn’t have any choice. She wouldn’t have to do this thing that Ruth was suggesting.