The passport is in the third drawer down in the filing cabinet. Dark blue, a phoenix stamped in gold on the cover, Lina Lahood. A young, hopeful face stares up at her. Fifteen years old. Fifteen. Melissa hunts through the other drawers, feeling sick. There’s no sign of a visa or a permit of any kind. She locks the drawers and replaces the key in the pouch and the pouch in the drawer, rearranges the desk as it was and turns off the light. Passport in hand she tiptoes up the stairs to the third floor. The door to Lina’s room is closed.

She knocks softly.

No answer. Lina must be hunting through drawers as well, trying to decide what to take, what to leave behind.

‘I’ve found you a place to stay,’ Melissa whispers.

She waits for the sound of a drawer closing, footsteps approaching the door, but the room is quiet.

She knocks once more, whispers more urgently, ‘We have to leave right now.’

Silence.

‘May I come in?’

She pushes the door open.

The bed is neatly made, the rug from the kitchen folded at the bottom.

Lina has gone.

Eve

Eve’s head jerks from the kitchen table as the sound of banging grows louder. She must have fallen asleep for a few minutes though she didn’t mean to, hadn’t thought it would be possible.

Eric crosses the room to the door, stumbling a little as he hurries. He hasn’t slept properly either. She hears his footsteps in the hall, the bolt sliding back and the door opening, then voices, low-pitched, serious, female. Eric enters the kitchen again, looking about the room as if lost and finding his bearings in an unfamiliar place.

‘Igor’s refusing to open his door to the police; they want him for questioning again. They’ve asked me to go and calm him down.’

‘Igor?’

The shock is sickening, like a blow to her face. Igor. A second later she is surprised by her surprise; it makes terrible sense. The man who had watched her or seemed to must have been watching Sorrel all along. He must have looked at her from behind the trees in the garden, or through the lit windows of the house in the dark, waiting for the moment when the family was distracted. What better distraction could he have hoped for than the death of her little brother?

She follows Eric to the hall. Four policemen are waiting by the door, two men, two women.

‘Why do you need Igor?’ she asks the Indian woman. ‘What’s he done?’