They don’t try to stop her; perhaps Brenda realizes she’s asked enough questions, at least for now. Outside torchlights are bobbing in the wood; it looks like a party, a Halloween party where kids muck around with lights in woods and scare themselves for fun. The helicopter has moved away; she can hear it in hovering over other gardens towards the village. She finds Eric searching under the trees, one by one. His face is muddy, he looks spent. The tall trunks surround them like a hostile army, he had been right all along. She had joked about jungles but he’d known better. He warned her about danger and she’d taken no notice. She kicks aside heaps of leaves, hauls away fallen branches, blinded by tears and gasping for breath. She’s made so many mistakes. Is Sorrel’s abduction, if that’s what it is, the price her child’s paid for the sake of freedom? How irrelevant that seems, how stupid she’s been. Eric was right to put safety first; it seems so obvious now but it’s too late. He can do what he wants, raze the trees to the ground if he thinks it would help, though there’s little point. It won’t make any difference. The wood, thronging with men and dogs, feels as empty as any desert.

Grace

Two policewomen walk through the rooms, searching the entire house again. They check cupboards, under beds and behind chests of drawers. The younger Indian woman looks delicate beside her middle-aged colleague, a stout redhead whose rolling accent sounds as though she’s in a play, pretending to be Scottish. Thankfully they both move quietly and carefully, in order not to scare a hidden child.

Grace leaves the policewomen and branches off on her own, climbing narrow stairs to the next floor. She has never been so deep in this house, so high. The rooms here are smaller, uncarpeted and cold. Martin raved about this house, its size and warmth; he clearly got as far as Eve’s room but no further. She hurries down the corridor, her feet thudding on the floor, treading down fury.

‘Sorrel? Are you here, sweetheart?’