“ ‘I’m not going to get sick any more,’ ” Cassie said, in the car. “And she stopped getting sick.”

“Willpower, like Simone said?”

“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Or she could have been making herself sick,” I said. “Vomiting and diarrhea are both pretty easy to induce. Maybe she was looking for attention, and once she got into ballet school she didn’t need to any more. She was getting plenty of attention without being sick—newspaper articles, fund-raisers, the lot. . . . I need a cigarette.”

“Junior Munchausen syndrome?” Cassie reached into the back, dug around in my jacket pockets and found my smokes. I smoke Marlboro Reds; Cassie has no particular brand loyalty but generally buys Lucky Strike Lights, which I consider to be girl cigarettes. She lit two and passed one to me. “Can we pull medical records on the two sisters as well?”

“Dodgy,” I said. “They’re alive, so there’s confidentiality. If we got the parents’ consent . . .” She shook her head. “Why, what are you thinking?”

She opened her window a few inches, and the wind blew her hair sideways. “I don’t know. . . . The twin, Jessica—the bunny-in-headlights thing In the Woods 65

could just be stress from Katy being missing, but she’s way too thin. Even through that big huge woolly thing you could tell she’s half the size of Katy, and Katy was no heifer. And then the other sister . . . There’s something off about her, too.”

“Rosalind?” I said.

There must have been something funny in my tone. Cassie shot me an oblique glance. “You liked her.”

“Yes, I suppose I did,” I said, defensive and not sure why. “She seemed like a nice girl. She’s very protective of Jessica. What, you didn’t?”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Cassie said coolly and, I felt, a little unfairly. “Regardless of who likes her, she dresses funny, she wears too much makeup—”

“She’s well groomed, so there’s something wrong with her?”

“Please, Ryan, do us both a favor and grow up; you know exactly what I mean. She smiles at inappropriate times, and, as you spotted, she wasn’t wearing a bra.” I had noticed that, but I hadn’t realized that Cassie had as well, and the dig irritated me. “She may well be a very nice girl, but there’s something off there.”

I didn’t say anything. Cassie threw the rest of her cigarette out the window and dug her hands into her pockets, slumped in her seat like a sulky teenager. I turned on dipped headlights and sped up. I was annoyed with her and I knew she was annoyed with me, too, and I wasn’t sure quite how this had happened.

Cassie’s mobile rang. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, looking at the screen. “Hello, sir. . . . Hello? . . . Sir? . . . Bloody phones.” She hung up.

“Reception?” I said coldly.

“The fucking reception is fine,” she said. “He just wanted to know when we’d be back and what was taking us so long, and I didn’t feel like talking to him.”