I have three choices: One, go home to my empty apartment and lose myself down a bottle of wine every night, whilst making desperate calls to William. Two, spend time here alone in this house, regressing into my childhood. Or three, head to Scotland, to Drummondale House with my dad beside me.

Tears burn as I imagine one of us recalling something vital that leads to finding Lark safe and well. Is it really possible?

‘OK,’ I say before I can change my mind, a surge of hope rising inside me. What if the answer to my sister’s disappearance really does lie up there in the Scottish Highlands? What if retracing our steps unearths a vital clue?

I drain my tea. ‘But you’ll need to keep me away from Maddie,’ I say, thumping my mug down. ‘Or I may just kill her.’

*

I watch from the front doorstep, as Dad lifts Thomas into the back seat of his Ford Freedom, and puts my brother’s wheelchair into the boot. Thomas looks different to when I saw him last. His hair’s longer, and it’s tied back in a man-bun, and he’s grown a beard too, which suits him.

‘Robert, could you spare one of those bottles of water? My mouth is so dry,’ Maddie calls out of the rear car window, as he loads a pack of water into the boot along with the bags and other provisions, including a litre bottle of gin, which looks tempting. The wind catches Maddie’s silky black hair and whips it across her face. ‘The weather’s going to be a challenge,’ she says, pulling the strands from her cheeks. ‘Let’s hope it’s better in Scotland.’

‘I hope so too,’ Dad says with a laugh.

I notice the way Thomas still looks at Maddie. I can’t work out if he’s in love with her, and I worry she’ll break his heart. A brief memory of her kissing his teary cheeks at Mum’s funeral flutters in and then evaporates. I’m sure she only sees herself as his carer, and one day she’ll meet someone and fall in love, and then what? Where does that leave my brother? My parents never planned for that.

‘Are you getting in, Amelia?’ Dad slams the car boot, and hands Maddie a bottle of water through the window.

Apprehension and the freezing weather nails me to the spot, and the earlier fluttering of snow is moving into blizzard territory.

‘Amelia?’

‘Uh-huh.’ A deep sigh turns to mist in front of me, as I make my way down the path, almost slipping on an earlier settling of snow. I climb into the passenger seat. Slam the door. Say nothing.

‘Grumpy!’ Thomas says, with a laugh. ‘I can see you’re going to be fun on this trip.’